


The Dog from Outer Space

by wolfiefics



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: M/M, Original Character(s), a story about a man and his dog, brief Okoye, cabb2019, disposable bad guys, like everyone, one not too bright Hydra head man, random Hydra mooks, random Wakandan villagers, who happens to have superpowers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-17
Updated: 2019-10-25
Packaged: 2020-12-21 07:47:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 18
Words: 28,247
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21071399
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wolfiefics/pseuds/wolfiefics
Summary: : Loyalty. Companionship. Love. It’s what Bucky looks for in a friend, a lover and a dog. He takes in a stray, hoping to ease his loneliness.Loyalty. Companionship. Acceptance. Back on Earth, Cosmo only wants these in a master, with no experimentation or cages.Danger. Intrigue. What they find when their pasts catch up to them, Bucky finds he has a lot in common with the stray he took in and Cosmo feels a sense of protectiveness for the man who’s lived through so much. When their pasts collide, can they save each other? With the help of a supersoldier, a flying ace, an assassin/spy and a man who dresses like giant cat?





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I was introduced to Cosmo in the Avenger’s Academy mobile game and just thought he was cool. I did some Wikipedia searching on the character and found him even cooler and noted that he had a cameo appearance in the Guardians of the Galaxy Volume One stinger. Cool but not plot bunny worthy. Then one day I was minding my own business and I was like, “What if Cosmo and Bucky met and found out they had a lot in common, being experimental subjects by mad Russian scientists?” and thus a plot bunny was born. I wrote halfheartedly on it for a year or so and did nothing else with it. Then I decided to do the Cap Big Bang this year and was like “What can I write about? I know!” And Ta-da! 
> 
> This, above all, is a story about a man and his dog, and belonging. Sure, it’s got a side helping of Stucky, my OTP, but they are just a side show. There are bad guys and adventures but some of it is exploring yourself, being comfortable with yourself and finding a home. 
> 
> I hope you like it! Join me on [Tumblr](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/wolfiefics)!
> 
> Thanks to my FANTASTIC artist [whatthefoucault](https://archiveofourown.org/users/whatthefoucault/) and my long-suffering beta reader, Lisa (buckys-amethyst-world on Tumblr).

Bucky Barnes stood facing the setting sun. Ever since Steve left him here in Wakanda, he’d found a sort of peace. Not that Steve left him on purpose, or even of his own free will. Bucky had insisted that Steve go off, be the hero and leave Bucky to whatever devices Princess Shuri and King T’Challa could find for him in their little but progressive African country. Of all the things he thought he’d wind up doing, goat farming was not one of them.

There was a bleat behind him and he turned to look at the noise. A crowd of goats had trailed him from their make shift pen to the water’s edge of the small lake by the village. Bucky still couldn’t pronounce the name of the village or even some of the villagers’ names but that was okay. They didn’t seem to mind. They merely took his brief nods and small smiles like gold, the women fed him up morning, noon and night and the men and boys showed him the fine art of goat tending. And, if every once in a while, a goat disappeared from his flock and wound up in a delicious stew, Bucky didn’t say a word. Goat was surprisingly good, especially with Wakandan spices.

He looked up at the stars starting to twinkle in the twilight and noticed one moving faster than it should. Satellite, he thought dismissively. From what Steve told him, outer space around the planet was littered with them. Going by the trajectory, Shuri could sometimes point out the ones she thought were Wakanda’s.

Bucky frowned at the night sky. The one he’d noticed, though, was moving at a downward pace and seemed to be picking up speed. The goats bleated, drawing his attention for a moment and when he looked up the satellite was on fire in the atmosphere, heading earthbound and close by.

He touched his kimoyo beads, specifically the communications bead and said “Shuri.” It flashed a yellow light once and then Shuri’s young face appeared. “White Wolf,” she greeted. “Is something wrong?”

“You might want to get someone out here. I think a satellite broke orbit and is heading our way. Fast.” He looked up and saw it was a blazing meteor now, getting closer and faster as it descended. “It’s probably going to hit one of the other borders.”

Shuri did something off screen and then gasped, though with delight or dismay Bucky couldn’t tell. “I will tell Brother right away. Good eyes, White Wolf!” she told him.

“I’m just staring at stars,” he reported. “It was hard to miss.”

There was a loud crash and in the distance a plume of dirt and smoke. “Did it land?” asked Shuri, noticing his distraction.

“Yeah, pretty close, want me to go check it out?”

“No, Brother will send someone. I will come see you tomorrow, if that’s okay?” she told him.

“It’s your country,” he replied back a little sassily. “You can visit whenever you want.”

“You are Wakandan now too,” she said pertly. “We adopted you.”

That made him feel warm inside to hear. It had been many years since he’d belonged. He hadn’t belonged in Hydra, he belonged to Hydra, like a possession. He’d served in the Army but no soldier really belongs in a war, no matter how much they excel at following orders. He hadn’t really belonged in Brooklyn as a young adult, part of the fringes of society as a bisexual man who frequented gay bars as well as straight bars. Only with Steve had he belonged, felt like he was accepted. Steve was just that kind of person. He made you be just by being near.

Thinking of his globe-trotting best friend and erstwhile lover was depressing so Bucky smiled at Shuri and wished her goodnight. Dismissing the satellite from his mind, he herded the loose goats back to their pen, secured the rope lock and ducked into his home.

For a hut, it was surprisingly comfortable. Steve had looked around when Shuri brought him to where Bucky was living the first time and said in his no-nonsense way, “Primitive doesn’t mean stupid. Looks more comfortable than where I’ve been sleeping.” And it was comfortable. Soft pallet against the wall, tapestries with colorful African designs hung on the wall, a fire pit in the center for cooking or warmth, a couple of windows with smaller patterned fabric over them for privacy, but that he could move aside for sunshine and fresh air. A large tapestry covered the door not that there was privacy. The children especially didn’t understand the concept of a closed door, Bucky discovered early on.

He let loose the tapestry that covered his door, smothering the hut into darkness. That was all right, he knew his way blindfolded. It had been a long day and he was tired. He made his way to the pallet, slipped out of some of the soft clothing he wore and lay down. Sleep was elusive at first, as it always was, with his mind racing from topic to topic, but eventually the day’s physical labors caught up with him and he fell asleep.


	2. Chapter 2

Cosmo crawled dizzily out of the space pod and looked around to make sure no one approached. There were voices in the distance but even with a dog’s enhanced hearing he couldn’t tell if they were approaching or just nearby. He was thankful the Collector hadn’t required him to wear his old cosmonaut suit and helmet. That would have been difficult to get off without opposable thumbs and likely would have identified him. Whoever found him would undoubtedly return him to the Soviet Union and he didn’t want to go.

Being an experiment for most of his life and then shot into space was all the science he wanted to be involved in. It hadn’t been bad being part of the Collector’s menagerie. Meals delivered, a few tricks to amuse the ancient alien and a soft place to sleep but it was a cage still, not dissimilar to the one he’d left behind in Russia. He longed for what every dog longed for: a kind and loving master, a home and a purpose. Despite being shot full of radiation, having an elongated lifespan, able to telepathically communicate and telekinetically move objects, Cosmo thought of himself as just a dog.

He trotted away from the space pod and slipped into the bushes in the surrounding area. He could smell water close by and he was thirsty. He eventually stumbled across a small lake and waded in, getting his fur soaked and lapping up water greedily. Space travel was thirsty work. Trudging out of the lake, he shook himself and headed around the lake. Perhaps there was a town or village nearby with someone wanting a dog. He could make himself look adorable, lost and well behaved, easily get adopted.

‘Yes,’ he thought to himself, ‘perhaps a village with many children or a family with children. I could handle watching children.’

On the other side of the lake he found a village chock full of animal smells he’d never smelled before. He surveyed the village. Wood and daub huts, pens full of animals beside them, much snoring going on. Ah well. This would serve. 

He trotted between huts and found a likely tree to curl up beneath next to a pen of four legged animals that bleated at him. He didn’t know what they were, but they seemed intimidated by him. He could try herding. Dogs without super intelligence did it all the time on instinct alone. How hard could it be? He would prove his worth to someone in the village tomorrow and finally have a home.

* * *

Bucky woke with the dawn despite his late evening, more out of habit than anything else. He knew how to make the traditional grain gruel that served as breakfast in the village and had a range of tasty fruits to add to it for more nutrition and taste. With his heaping bowl, he stepped outside into the burgeoning light, blinking sleepily.

The goats seemed particularly riled up this morning, he noted, listening to their excited bleats. Maybe a space alien had landed instead of a satellite crash and had eaten some of them. Steve had told him about the Battle of New York against aliens he called the Chitauri. Even after watching the videos and seeing the old news coverage in papers and magazine archives, it was difficult to believe.

He finished his cereal and set the bowl down by his hut’s door to wander over to the goat pen to see what the ruckus was. They were milling about at one end of the pen, bleating in complaint and casting glances to over by the tree. Curious, Bucky walked around the pen to the tree and let out a bark of laughter.

There, snoozing in the dawn’s light, was a dog. A mutt of some sort, by the look of him. He looked a little underfed and his fur was matted from undoubtedly swimming in the lake. Bucky hadn’t seen him around the village. There were plenty of dogs, sure, but not this one. He didn’t look like an Wakandan breed of dog, if the village dogs were any representation. The sleeping mongrel looked like he might have a bit of Labrador or other hunting dog in him.

The dog’s coat was a rusty brown, with ears that flopped over his head. The dog was curled nose to tail tip so it was difficult to tell the animal’s size, but Bucky was good at estimating things. He figured the dog would come up to his knees or maybe a bit taller.

“Hey, wake up!” he called to the animal, unsure whether to call it a boy or a girl. It seemed rude to assign a gender without knowing.

At his voice the dog’s head shot up in alarm. It looked around a bit frantically but, seeing no danger, relaxed and looked up at Bucky. The dog’s long snout opened in a panting, doggy grin and it stood up, tail wagging furiously.

“Where’d you come from, huh?” asked Bucky, holding out a hand and approaching carefully. “Outer space?”

The dog seemed to tense at his words and came slowly toward Bucky as well, nose in the air, sniffing avidly. Once man and canine were face-to-face, the dog sniffed Bucky’s outstretched hand and then gave it a lick.

Bucky gave a soft laugh, charmed by the dog’s manners. “Let’s look you over, make sure you aren’t hurt, okay?”

The dog made a chuffing sound and sat on its haunches, head tilted to one side as if thinking. Then with a cheerful bark, it flopped on it back, exposing its belly. Bucky couldn’t help but hide a grin. He quickly ran his hands over the dog, but found no injuries. No collar either, not that any of the village dogs had them. And from the dog’s rather undignified sprawl, he could see the dog was a boy.

“Well, boy,” Bucky said standing up. “I don’t have any dog food. Most of the village dogs eat leftovers, I think. I’ve got some scraps I can feed you. You look like I used to, a bit skinny and worn out. Let’s get you some grub, fill that tummy of yours, yeah?”

He patted his thigh and jerked his head toward his hut. “Come on, boy, food?”

The dog leapt to his feet and trotted over to Bucky and stopped beside him, an expectant look on his face. Bucky laughed again, something loosening in his shoulders at how trusting the dog was of him. That was the great thing about animals, he decided as he led the dog to his hut, they didn’t judge you for your past or your future, only for your present. And they were quick to forgive.


	3. Chapter 3

Cosmo was amused by this human’s thoughts. He had trouble reading him, as so much of his thoughts and feelings were walled up deep inside him. Cosmo sensed, though, that this was a human that had been through some terrible things, like he had, and might be a good potential master. He seemed kind, anyway. That was a step in the right direction.

Cosmo followed the human he discerned who was named Bucky to the hut near the animal pen and went inside. There was dim light from the sunshine coming in through the doorway. This human, Bucky, pulled aside some covering over the window, letting in more light and turned to him.

“Okay, I’ve got some leftover goat here in this small cellar,” he told the dog. “Gimme a minute.”

Cosmo obediently sat down to wait as Bucky lifted a round wooden thing off the ground and reached inside a hole in the ground that it had covered. “As my friend Steve always says, primitive doesn’t mean stupid. The ground here, with a little bit of imported ice, makes a nice refrigerator temporarily. I mean, it won’t last forever, but it lasts pretty long.”  
The human seemed intent on reassuring Cosmo that whatever he was going to feed the canine was edible. Cosmo appreciated the gesture.

Out of the hole came fabric wrapped something that smelled absolutely mouthwatering. Cosmo, knowing he couldn’t do anything but bark to show his excitement, did just that. Maybe, if this new human proved to be trustworthy and thus his new master, he would reveal the extent of his powers. Until then, nothing more than acting the average dog would do.

“Smell that, huh?” laughed Bucky. Cosmo spun in a circle, tail wagging furiously and barked again. “All right, all right! A nice big hunk of roast goat for the hungry dog. I get it!”

When Bucky put knife to the roast goat at a piece smaller than Cosmo would like, he barked again in displeasure. He put a little nudge of thought in Bucky’s head that he’d like a bigger piece. It worked, to Cosmo’s delight. “A bigger piece?” asked Bucky skeptically. “When did you eat last, boy?”

A bigger piece was cut and Cosmo waited patiently for it to be chopped into smaller, bite-sized chunks, put in a bowl and set down on the ground. Though it was cooked food, heavy with spices, Cosmo didn’t care. He’d run out of rations a week ago and water two days before he crash-landed the space pod. He wolfed down the food in record time and smacked his chops in satisfaction when he was done.

Bucky watched him with a look of bemusement. “You really were hungry, weren’t ya?”

Cosmo whuffed at him and wagged his tail twice. He went over to Bucky, sat down and put up a paw. Bucky got it without needing to be nudged, put out his hand to grasp the dog’s paw and shook it gently. “You’re welcome.”

Bucky considered Cosmo for a minute and then shrugged. “The other villagers should be up by now. Let’s see if they know where you came from. They’re more familiar with the other villages throughout. I’d hate to keep some kid’s dog just because he showed up on my doorstep and I fed him my lunch.”

Cosmo wasn’t sure how to respond to that. It’s not like he could telepathically tell Bucky he belonged to no one. He followed Bucky out of the primitive but comfortable home and to the next hut some distance away. “I had them build my shelter away from the rest of the village because I sometimes have nightmares. Like screaming-myself-awake type of nightmares. I don’t want to wake the whole village,” Bucky explained. Then he laughed at himself. “You don’t care. You’re a dog. You have no idea what I’m saying. Still,” he stopped, stooped down and scratched Cosmo’s ears, “you seem a good dog. I bet some family is missing you. If not, I guess I have myself a dog.”

Cosmo woofed his approval. Bucky didn’t seem so bad. He was kind and a little insecure. Having a dog like Cosmo, the dog decided, could be nothing but good for Bucky.  
All morning, Bucky and Cosmo went from hut to hut. Bucky explaining in broken Wakandan and English that he’d found a dog and did anyone know where he came from. All the answers were negative. A couple of the men in the village laughed and told Bucky he had a dog now. After a while, Bucky conceded, turned to Cosmo and shrugged. “I have a dog now.”

Cosmo sat down and looked up expectantly at Bucky.

“Okay, so if I have a dog, you need a name,” Bucky continued. “Nothing stupid like Bowser or Rusty.”

Cosmo agreed. He’d always been Cosmo in any language he knew, both Earth and alien, so he began to nudge Bucky’s mind subtly to that name. He didn’t think he could remember to respond to anything else.

“Let’s see, there was that satellite crash last night,” mused Bucky, heading back to his hut and the animal pen. “Maybe you are from outer space. What was that Russian dog’s name that went to space? Laika or something? I think that’s a girl’s name though, so that won’t work.”

_Cosmo_, the dog thought at the human.

“Americans call their spacemen astronauts so how about Astro?” suggested Bucky. Cosmo shook his head and whuffed his disagreement. “Hey, it’s a cool name! I think there’s a cartoon dog by that name. Maybe you’re right. Being named after a cartoon dog is stupid. I only saw the cartoon when I was on the run still in the United States, before I hopped a freight ship to Europe to escape.” Bucky stopped by the animal pen, pulled off the rope latch, and swung open the gate. The four-legged animals that Cosmo still didn’t know what they were streamed out, bleating, heading toward the lake to drink.

“Russians called their astronauts cosmonauts,” mused Bucky.

_Cosmo_, nudged Cosmo again and this time Bucky got it.

“How about Cosmo, for short?” he suggested. Cosmo spun around in a circle, barking excitedly. Bucky laughed. “Winner, winner, chicken dinner!” he exclaimed. “Come on, Cosmo, I’ll show you how to herd goats.”

Ah, then these four-legged herd animals were called goats. That was good to know. ‘They made a tasty breakfast,’ he thought, as he followed Bucky, who was ambling lazily after the goats. ‘And I am to herd them, be their caretaker,’ he thought to himself. He could earn his keep that way easily. How hard could herding these animals be?

* * *

Bucky couldn’t contain his laughter as the dog desperately tried to herd the goats where he thought they should go. Goats were scattering everywhere, uncertain of this new dog in their midst. Every time they headed for their grazing area, Cosmo would try to herd them back to their pen, thinking that’s where they belonged. Bucky, laughing too hard at the hapless dog’s efforts, didn’t have the breath in him to correct the dogged animal.

“White Wolf?” called a young female voice from behind him and Bucky turned around to see Princess Shuri of Wakanda walking toward him. “What’s so funny? I don’t think I’ve ever heard you laugh like that.”

“I got a dog,” he explained and waved a hand to the scene before them. 

Shuri watched for a moment, her dark, intelligent eyes missing nothing of the tableau and then she turned to grin at him. “Did you at least tell the dog that they are going where they are supposed to?”

The dog stopped his efforts and turned to look at them with an almost incredulously doggy expression on his face. Then he plopped down on his butt and let the wary goats head for their grazing ground.

“See?” Shuri smirked. “You just had to tell him!”

“Still a smarty-pants, I see,” teased Bucky, tweaking a braid on the young woman’s head.

“Still dumb as a post, I see,” she teased back. She looked back at the panting dog. “Where did he come from?”

“No idea. He was sleeping under the tree by the pens when I came out this morning. Had the goats in a tizzy,” Bucky remarked. “I asked everyone in the village if he belonged to anyone, but they hadn’t seen him before either. So, I guess he’s mine.”

Shuri pondered this a minute and then frowned. “That is odd.”

“Why? No stray dogs in Wakanda?” asked Bucky.

“No, it’s just that what you saw crashing to Earth last night was not a satellite but some sort of small pod, possibly from a bigger ship.”

Bucky tensed and looked toward his new dog. “Dog sized?” he asked warily, wondering if maybe his dog was an alien.

“No, it was quite large, big enough for a couple of humans to sit and move around comfortably,” Shuri told him. “There was no sign of any strangers this morning?”

“No one,” confirmed Bucky with a frown. “Well, other than the dog.”

“Other than the dog,” echoed Shuri, also with a frown. Then she laughed, a bright sound that never failed to warm Bucky’s heart with its happiness. “How silly! I was contemplating whether a dog could fly a spaceship.” She shook her head over her own flight of fancy.

“It does seem farfetched but maybe he belonged to whoever did fly it?” suggested Bucky gravely, not joining in her laughter.

Shuri shrugged. “I have alerted the village elders to be on the lookout for strangers,” she told him. “I have also contacted nearby villages to do the same. If your dog did belong to whoever flew that ship, he obviously didn’t want to stay with them.”

Bucky nodded, tense and wary. “Could be aliens?” he murmured.

“With a half-breed mongrel in tow?” asked Shuri in disbelief.

Bucky thought about it for a moment and then shrugged. “Yeah, maybe that is stretching it a bit.”

Shuri turned her attention to the dog, who was watching them with rapt attention, head tilted to the side in a considering manner. “Did you name him yet?” she asked.

“Cosmo.”

“Cosmo, as in cosmonaut?”

“Yeah.”

“A bit too fitting now that you think about these mysterious circumstances.” Shuri’s attention never wavered off the dog, and the dog’s attention never wavered off of them.

“Bowser is a stupid name for a dog and he didn’t like Astro.” Bucky shrugged.

Shuri turned to him with a mischievous grin. “The village is good for you,” she noted and then waved a hand toward the animal watching them eagle-eyed. “But the dog will be better. Already, he has you laughing like a school boy.”

Bucky fought a blush and failed. “Well, he can’t live on goat and scraps,” Bucky decided.

“You want me to order you some dog food?” asked Shuri suspiciously.

“If you don’t mind. I mean he ate the goat roast I gave him for breakfast but he looks scrawny. He needs fattening up. I mean,” Bucky realized that she might take offense at how her people fed their dogs in the village, “he’s not an African dog, right? So, he’s probably not used to scraps and stuff.”

“Yes.” Shuri’s eyes twinkled but she refrained from further teasing. “He looks like a dog of refined tastes. A high protein dog food is exactly what he needs. I’ll have a large bag sent from the city.”

Bucky arched an eyebrow at her words.

She shrugged. “Not every dog in Wakanda is a village dog,” she said with a toothy smile and Bucky knew she hadn’t taken offense at his words.

“He is pure pedigree,” he agreed. “The finest example of pure-dee, old mutt you could ever find.”

Shuri threw one last glance at the dog. “He is rather handsome.” The dog’s tailed wagged once. She then turned her attention elsewhere, her eyes going distant. “I must go to the city and advise my brother on what I found.”

“You didn’t go to the crash site alone, did you?” admonished Bucky.

“No, a couple of Dora Milaje went with me,” assured Shuri as she turned to walk back to the village.

Bucky hesitated long enough to tell the dog, “Don’t let them leave that little pasture.” Cosmo woofed and turned his doggy attention to the goats. Bucky shook his head. The dog seemed to understand everything he said.

He hurried after the Wakandan princess and settled his stride even with hers. “So, what’s your next move?” he asked, referring to the space pod.

“We will transport it to the capital and investigate its origins,” she said decisively. “It’s been awhile since I’ve been presented with such a puzzle. I’m sure I’ll have it solved in no time.”

Knowing the brilliance of Shuri’s mind, Bucky had no doubts. 

Some village elders approached their princess, speaking rapid fire Wakandan at her. She replied in kind, gave Bucky an apologetic look and left him alone with his thoughts.

‘A space pod landed and then my dog mysteriously showed up,’ thought Bucky. ‘That couldn’t be a coincidence.’

“Hey, Shuri?” he called out and the princess stopped her conversations and turned back to him. “There are ways to track animals now other than collars, right?”

Her eyes lit in immediate comprehension. “I will bring some equipment out tomorrow,” she called to him and then turned away.

Satisfied with her answer, Bucky went back to his new dog and his goats. While it was all a mystery, Bucky felt protective of the animal. If it had come in the pod with someone or something, Cosmo had obviously escaped. Bucky would give the dog a safe haven to hide. He knew what it was like to run from cruel masters.


	4. Chapter 4

Cosmo hadn’t liked the gist of the conversation between his human, Bucky, and the new human, Shuri. He hadn’t caught all of it, dividing his attention between them and the goats but he knew their suspicions that he came from the pod could be bad. Would they believe he was intelligent enough to fly a space ship?

As he watched the herd of goats graze in their little pasture, he considered his options. He liked Bucky and sensed Bucky was protective of him. That was good. But would that protectiveness extend if the man found out Cosmo had once been an experiment and realized the extent of what Cosmo could do? That was something to ponder. Perhaps, surreptitiously, he could slip into Bucky’s mind, get more of an idea of the kind of human he was.

Bucky came over after Shuri left to sit with Cosmo, watching the goats eat. He began talking of the dangers these rather harmless animals faced. “I haven’t seen any, but the villagers tell me than there are several prides of lions in the country. Goats are easy prey. Personally, I don’t mind feeding goat to the occasional lion. I’ve read lions are having a hard time finding food because humans are hunting them out of territory. It’s a shame. Lions are pretty killer-diller. Did you know the females do the hunting usually? And the males are beautiful, with these manes around their heads. Africa is full of just really cool animals, a lot of them endangered, though.”

Cosmo filed that information away. Could he take on a lion? How big were they? These goats weren’t huge but Cosmo knew he couldn’t eat one by himself. If lion could, they must be big.

Bucky continued to talk about African animals and Cosmo absorbed it all. Dusk rolled around and they herded the goats back into their pen, with Bucky pulling the gate shut and locking it up for the night. He patted the dog on the head fondly and hustled them into his hut. 

“Last of the goat, but hopefully Shuri can get you some dog food tomorrow. Proper dog food, I guess,” Bucky commented, setting down the chunks of roast goat chunks in a trencher next to a bowl of water for Cosmo and some for himself. Bucky lit a lamp and Cosmo noted with some interest that it wasn’t an oil lamp. It didn’t flicker with a flame.  
Noting the dog’s interest Bucky held it up. “Special Wakandan technology. Looks like a regular lantern but uses their, well, I guess you’d call it a battery but not like any I’ve ever seen. Doesn’t give off heat, just lights the place up. If I’m not too tired, I try to read a bit at night.”

Cosmo woofed and wandered over next to Bucky’s pallet where the human was sitting and curled up. He felt Bucky scratch his ears and rumbled in contentment. Other than pages turning as Bucky read, it was companionably quiet. Watching goats and being on alert for an attack was hard work, Cosmo decided as he drifted off to sleep. Maybe there was more to herding than he thought.

* * *

Bucky woke the following morning by a shrill ring. He fumbled with the burner cell phone he kept by the pallet and activated the phone to accept the call. He knew who it was even though it said unknown number. 

“You haven’t done anything stupid, have you?” he rasped sleepily.

“How could I? You’ve got all the stupid with you,” came the cheeky reply.

Bucky couldn’t help but smile. “Where are you?”

“Middle East, can’t say where but it’s hot as balls.”

“You are very conspicuous to be in the Middle East. In case you haven’t looked in the mirror, you are a six foot two, blond, blue eyed brick shithouse of a man, Steve,” Bucky admonished.

“I’m staying covered, I promise.”

“Uh-huh. The only reason I don’t despair is because you have Romanov with you,” Bucky rejoined. There was a shuffling sound and a grunt to his right and he looked over at his dog, who was peering at him with one eye open as if to say, “what are you doing?”

He grinned.

“How have you been, Buck?” asked Steve over the crackling line.

“Good. I got a dog.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah, I named him Cosmo. Just showed up in the village but he’s a good dog. I’m teaching him to herd goats. Real smart dog.” Bucky scratched the dog’s head and crooned, “Aren’t you, boy, aren’t you?” The dog’s tail gave a sleepy wag.

He could hear Steve chuckling at him over the line. “Cosmo, huh? What kind of dog?”

“Not a typical local dog,” Bucky described. “You remember that dog that trailed us all over Marseilles that one time? Looks kinda like that. Mutt of some sort, but real handsome. Even Shuri thought he was handsome. Kinda scrawny, needs fattening up. Hasn’t had anyone to take care of him in a while I don’t think.”

Steve hummed in response, encouraging Bucky to add, “I got no problem fattening him up. I got experience fattening up underfed punks.”

“Yeah, yeah, you’re never gonna let go that I was once 100 pounds soaking wet on a good day, are you?”

“Hell no!” exclaimed Bucky teasingly. “You were the tiniest, toughest punk in all of New York City, let alone Brooklyn.”

“Well, I could take you now, Barnes, and don’t you forget it.”

“When you coming back?” asked Bucky, changing the subject.

“Soon, I think. Sam’s complaining he’s having flashbacks to Afghanistan with sand in his butt cheeks.”

Bucky laughed. “Better than foot rot.”

“That’s what I told him but he seemed unimpressed by my argument.”

“Tell him from me he’s a wuss and to suck it up.”

“Will do. I gotta go, Buck. I promise to see you soon.”

“Take care, Rogers,” Bucky said in a low, menacing tone. “If I have to play white knight to rescue your sorry ass because you got it in trouble, you’ll be sorry.”

“But it’s such a nice ass!” protested Steve on a laugh. And then he added more somberly. “You take care too, Buck. See you soon.”

The phone disconnected. They never said good bye. Bucky felt too superstitious, like it was a death knell, so they refrained. Sometimes he wanted to say I love you but even though they shared a bed when Steve was with him, he wasn’t sure where Steve’s heart was at. And he was too chicken.

With a sigh he put the phone down and glanced over at the dog. Cosmo was staring at him with solemn, brown doggy eyes. Bucky scrubbed a hand down his face and tried to extricate his thoughts away from such destructive thinking.

“How about a bath before breakfast?” he asked the dog. Cosmo’s tail whumped a couple times on the hard-packed earthen floor so Bucky took that as an agreement. “Let me get some soap and a change of clothes and we’ll head to this little spot I know of for some privacy. You’ll love it, it’s a little waterfall.”


	5. Chapter 5

Bucky, Cosmo found to his delight, wasn’t joking about the place to bathe. It was teeming with life: birds chirping and crooning, fish and frogs splashing, leaves rustling in the gentle breeze. The waterfall, a small one trickling through the foliage and cascading off a rock face, gave the whole atmosphere a paradisaical quality. 

He waded into the pool while Bucky stripped down, doggy paddling around at the shallow end, enjoying the cool water ruffling through his fur and on his skin. This place, Wakanda, was hot and humid, he’d found out, but beautiful. He turned to Bucky with an awkward, water-logged spin and about drowned in shock.

He’d noticed Bucky was missing an arm, it was hard to miss, after all, but the scars and the metal socket on his left shoulder had not been noticeable, covered by clothes. Recovering his equilibrium, he dragged himself ashore and flopped down into the cool grass, watching as his new human headed for the waterfall.

Who had done such a thing to Bucky? Gentle, soft-spoken Bucky? Cosmo felt a growl rise in his throat, wanting to rend and tear apart anyone who would hurt such a gentle, loving human. Such men like Bucky, Cosmo knew from experience, were few and far between. As Bucky bathed, Cosmo watched, on alert, vowing that no one would hurt this gentle human ever again if Cosmo had anything to say about it.

* * *

Bucky, ever conscious of the environment around him, used his natural soap and shampoo on his body and hair, reveling in the feeling of the cool water sliding down his overheated body. The metal socket on his shoulder was waterproof and the wires were protected by the rubber covering Shuri and her scientists had put on when he first arrived in Wakanda a broken man. Steve would argue he wasn’t broken, but at the time Bucky felt like a puzzle not yet put together.

The soap had a soft scent, almost flowery, but Bucky didn’t mind. A little flowery scent didn’t threaten his masculinity. He snorted. The Winter Soldier for over 70 years, he’d not remember soft scents like flowers or perfume. Smelled it, sure, as he ghosted through gardens and parties, intent on the mission and nothing else, not comprehending the sights and smells around him like a normal human being. He hadn’t been a normal human being, after all, merely a weapon, a tool for destruction and fear.

His stomach clenched and nausea roiled in his gut. He stopped soaping himself down and took deep, calming breathes. He was no longer the Winter Soldier. He was now James Buchanan “Bucky” Barnes. He was a broken-down soldier trying to rebuild his sense of self and identity. Not a murderous, rampaging automaton. 

Unbidden but not unwelcome to his mind came Steve’s face, smiling shyly at him, his mouth quirked in that trade mark goofy grin, coaxing Bucky into sharing the irony of life with him. His hand drifted lower down his body as his mind flashed to scenes of Steve’s strong hands running down his body instead, ghosting over his flesh, causing goose pimples to rise. He took himself in hand and stifled a loud moan as he stroked, imagining his hand as Steve’s hand. He could hear Steve whisper his name in his ear, his deep baritone raggedly moaning Bucky’s name. Bucky shuddered his quick completion, the waterfall washing away evidence of his release. Bucky tipped his head back in the shower of water, rinsing away the salty tears that came involuntarily to his eyes.

Steve. Steve would be here soon. He said so this morning on the phone. He would bring Natasha and Wilson, true, but Bucky would have Steve for a short time while they rested and recuperated from their self-imposed fugitive life and covert missions. Natasha would tap away on tablets and computers, garnering more information on their next job. Wilson would coax Bucky into doing various helpful therapeutic things when they weren’t sniping at each other, jealous of the other over Steve’s attentions.

And Bucky would have Steve, in his bed, in his arms and watching his every move with those worried, loving blue eyes.

It would be for a few days or maybe even a full week. It was always brief but Bucky didn’t mind. Steve needed to make his way in this new world. A new life no longer an American citizen, but a fugitive from the stupidity of the world’s leaders.

As his mind drifted to the circumstances that brought all them to this impasse, his lax mood vanished. Steve, honorable, forthright, righteous Steve, was wanted by the whole world as a criminal. The same with Natasha and Wilson. Bucky could understand the world turning against him. No matter the circumstances, he had been an assassin for decades, killing political, scientific and other influential people since the 1950s. That he’d been tortured and manipulated mattered little to the world and to himself, if he was honest. Guilt draped over him like a quilt.

He picked up a towel and briskly dried himself off, angered by the direction of his thoughts. He glanced at the dog, who was staring at him in abject fascination. He felt a twinge but he couldn’t decipher the reason. Cosmo was an innocent animal. The dog seemed to trust him. Was this a foolish animal response, dictated by his domesticated instincts? Or did the dog know something about Bucky that Bucky himself didn’t see?

Bucky wrapped the towel around his waist after toweling his hair from dripping to damp. He stretched out next to the dog, wrinkling his nose at the smell of wet dog, but content to share the space with his canine companion despite it.

Unasked a thought entered his head. It doesn’t matter what they made you. It matters what you make of yourself now.

It was a nice thought, Bucky decided, and drifted off into a post-orgasm nap.

* * *

Bucky couldn’t shield his thoughts worth a damn. Images and words of his decades of mistreatment sprang into Cosmo’s mind one horrible flash of memory after another as the human bathed. When he’d been masturbating the thoughts had been erotic and pleasant, as well as a bit uncomfortable. Cosmo had felt like he was intruding on something private, which admittedly he was. But the thoughts and memories that came after…Cosmo shuddered. It was reminiscent of his own past. An experiment, an object to abuse and manipulate. Cosmo understood that, sympathized and it made him more protective of Bucky. They had more in common than Cosmo ever dreamed.

He lay in the grass, the heat tempered by the lush coolness around him drying his fur and Bucky’s hair. Bucky’s dreams were peaceful, thank the cosmos, and Cosmo found himself whiling away the time pondering what he could do to help his new human master.

He could be the perfect, understanding companion. He knew that Bucky needed someone who wouldn’t judge him for his past. Cosmo understood and sympathized with that completely, as he needed that too. Cosmo would monitor Bucky’s thoughts and emotions, offering comfort and tough love as needed. He would help Bucky physically. He’d noticed that sometimes Bucky had trouble doing chores one handed. While Cosmo had no hands, he could carry stuff in his mouth. He would ease Bucky’s burdens by making his home more disabled friendly using his telekinesis when Bucky slept. He would evaluate Bucky’s home for little, less noticeable improvements to make Bucky’s life less stressful.  
Yes. He would use his gifts to help Bucky live a more comfortable, acceptable life, ease his woes, both physical and psychological, and be the best damned dog the universe had ever seen.

Thus resolved, Cosmo drifted into a nap as well, lulled by the gentle snores of his human lying beside him.


	6. Chapter 6

The days waxed and waned, punctuated by villagers visiting Bucky and herding and watching over goats. Bucky tried to chip in to help the villagers but they, knowing a one-armed man who didn’t know their ways, would be more hindrance than help, relegated him to tasks that he could accomplish without knowing they offered him charity. They knew the proud White Wolf would be hurt by thinking they helped only out of charity. White Wolf was a proud man, a great warrior cast adrift by the fates. They welcomed him into their lives but recognized his limited abilities even if he himself did not.

Cosmo appreciated the villagers’ tact and motives.

He had studied the hut he and Bucky shared when Bucky was helping the villagers one day. Objects were placed inconveniently for Bucky, he decided. Nothing could be done about the cold food storage but the placement of his utensils and dishes was horrid. Using his telekinesis, Cosmo removed the few books, magazines and newspapers from a small shelving unit and placed the utensils, bowls, plates and cups there instead. Why Bucky kept them in a wooden chest was beyond Cosmo’s understanding.

The reading material he placed in the chest.

Another trunk was full of Bucky’s clothes, both European style and Wakandan dress. It was all jumbled and wadded up, like Bucky just tossed them in once washed and dried. Every morning the human spent at least ten minutes digging through everything just to find underwear. Cosmo organized the trunk, African style clothes on one side, European trousers and shirts on the other. A smaller lidded basket, empty of anything and sitting there unused, now held underwear and socks.

Cosmo even telekinetically removed the mud and grime caked on Bucky’s boots. They weren’t polished and gleaming like a soldier’s boots, but they were at least a recognizable black instead of a brownish-red caked brick.

The pallet was unmade and really on the wrong side of the hut, Cosmo decided. Bucky liked to sleep on his side with his face to the doorway, probably a habit picked up in having to remain on alert from attack for so many decades. It meant, though, that Bucky lay on his armless side, with the metal socket digging into tender, scarred flesh. He tossed and turned every night.

Cosmo wondered if he could get away with moving the bed and not making Bucky more suspicious. After a long hard think, Cosmo decided he’d done enough for one day. He would see how Bucky took the changes he made thus far before making more.

Content with the day’s work, he trotted outside the hut to come face to face with a hulking giant of a man. Human and dog stared at each other for a long moment before Cosmo thought to react. Sensing that as a watch dog he should alert the village to a stranger, even though he sensed this stranger meant no harm, he began to growl and bark. Loudly.  
The other village dogs took up the cry. The hulking man grimaced and put up his hands placatingly. 

“It’s okay, boy. You’re Cosmo, right? Good dog. I’m not here to hurt anyone. Good boy,” the man said. “Quiet now. Good boy.”

The man tried to step around Cosmo, but Cosmo countered the move, still barking. This man may mean no harm, but he had no business going into Bucky’s home uninvited.

“Buck?” called out the man with exasperation. “Hey Buck! Call off your dog!”

So, this man knew Bucky. Knew him well enough to have a shortening of his nickname. No matter. He was a stranger and until Bucky told Cosmo he was safe, Cosmo would protect. He raised his hackles and gave a deep, menacing growl.

A slightly shorter and less muscular but still fit man stepped up behind Steve and crossed dark skinned arms across his chest, smirking. “The great Captain America, taken down by a mutt.”

The blond giant threw a decidedly despairing look over his shoulder at the newcomer. “I think this is the dog Bucky told me about. He’s just protecting Bucky. I can understand that. I don’t want to scare or hurt the animal, Sam.”

The other stranger, Sam, nodded but still smirked. Cosmo continued to growl, now at both of them. He was rapidly becoming outnumbered. Bucky better arrive soon and straighten this out.

There was shouting from the village a short distance away and men came running, village dogs ahead of them. Once the villagers saw who it was, though, their steps slowed and there was laughter. Cosmo had a feeling the laughter was at his, and the stranger’s, expense.

Bucky arrived moments later. He stepped up and Cosmo stiffened, taking a menacing step towards this Captain America person, still growling, sending into Bucky’s head that the newcomers were trying to enter his home uninvited.

Bucky, dense as he sometimes was to Cosmo’s mental intrusions, seemed to pick up on this, for he walked to Cosmo first, talking calmly, softly.

“Hey, boy, good dog, protecting the house. You don’t have to protect it from Steve, though.” Cosmo stopped growling and lowered his hackles. Okay so Bucky did know the strangers. “Me and Steve,” Bucky hesitated and kneeled beside the dog, rucking his hand in the dog’s fur. “Me and Steve are best friends, among other things. You can trust Steve. The idiot behind him, though, feel free to take a chunk out of his leg whenever you feel like it.”

The man named Sam gave a put out, “Hey! That’s not nice, Barnes!” which both man and dog ignored.

“Steve, hold out your hand so he can get a sniff of ya,” Bucky instructed. It wasn’t necessary as Cosmo was much smarter than the average dog but he knew this was a typical way for regular dogs to become accustomed to newcomers in their life.

Steve obligingly held out a hand and Cosmo gave a proper sniff. He smelled of musky, sweaty human and something else that Cosmo couldn’t pinpoint. It was reassuring though and Cosmo decided to give a wag of his tail to show his approval.

“Good dog,” Bucky said and he hugged the dog, causing Cosmo to freeze. Bucky’d never hugged him before. A pat on the head or scratch behind the ear but never a hug. He saw Bucky look up at Steve and grin. “I got a good dog, don’t I?”

Steve had a big grin on his face as his huge hand scratched behind Cosmo’s ear. “Sure do. And you always wanted a dog. None of us could ever afford another mouth to feed.”

This cemented to Cosmo that he was where he belonged. Bucky had always wanted a canine companion and Cosmo had always wanted a human who cared for him. They were destined.

The villagers, satisfied that the hubbub was nothing to be concerned by, welcomed Steve and Sam with broken English and then went back to their activities. Bucky motioned the two men into his home but stopped in surprise just inside the door.

“What the -“

Steve crowded behind Bucky but Cosmo just slipped by both men and headed for the pallet to curl up. He wanted a good vantage point to view Bucky’s reactions to his changes.

“Where you in here, changing stuff around?” asked Bucky in bewilderment.

“The dog wouldn’t let us in, Buck,” Steve told him, peering over Bucky’s shoulder. “What’s changed?”

“My dishes, where’s my books? I didn’t make the bed this morning,” Bucky mumbled, looking around. Cosmo tensed.

Steve shoved Bucky further inside and looked around. He peered inside the chests, taking in the folded and organized clothes, noted where the books and other reading materials were and huffed a laugh. “You were always shit at organization, Barnes,” Steve chortled. “Whoever did this, did you a favor.”

Bucky frowned for a moment and then shrugged. “We’ll see. I’ll change it back if it doesn’t work out.”

Cosmo relaxed. Good. Bucky wasn’t going to be stubborn about it. Steve, he considered for a moment, might be an ally in Cosmo’s mission to make Bucky’s life easier.  
Sam stepped into the cool interior and plopped down with a heavy sigh. “Glad we’re here. Some down time is more than welcome. Dodging terrorists with Hydra or Chitauri weapons and shit is a pain in the ass and not very relaxing.”

The name Hydra niggled something deep in Cosmo’s memory. He knew these people had something to do with Bucky’s mistreatment but it went deeper than that. Where, besides in Bucky’s head, had he heard of Hydra before?

“Tiring but necessary,” agreed Steve, sitting down next to Cosmo and ruffling the dog’s fur.

Bucky looked at the two men consideringly. “I don’t have enough supplies to feed five of us. Let’s go the city, buy stuff. I’m almost out of dog food.”

The two other men shrugged. “Sounds good to me,” Sam yawned. “After a nap, if you don’t mind.” He flopped down on the hard ground floor and quickly fell asleep.

Bucky plopped down on Cosmo’s other side and he and Steve’s hands twined together in Cosmo’s fur. “You okay, punk?” Bucky asked in a near whisper.

“Tired, like I said,” Steve told him. “Glad to be here.”

“How long you here?”

“Natasha estimates a couple weeks. We’re all beat from this last mission. It was rough.” Steve’s face darkened and then cleared. Cosmo felt a fleeting brush of Steve’s conflicted emotions. “We need the extra time. Plus, Natasha is trying to track some Hydra equipment gone astray and having trouble with it. We could,” and Steve looked at Bucky and then quickly looked away, “use someone who knows Hydra protocols to help.”

Cosmo sensed Bucky still and the smell of fear rose from Bucky like a stench.

“How so?”

“Don’t know yet. We’re still trying to figure stuff out. Might be something,” Steve shrugged, “might be nothing.”

Steve leaned over Cosmo and brushed a kiss on Bucky’s mouth. The smell of fear lessened to something like how Bucky smelled at the waterfall.

“I promise, we wouldn’t involve you at all if we can help it. Don’t worry about it for now,” Steve told Bucky reassuringly and Cosmo felt Bucky’s hand relax in his fur.

“All right, punk,” sighed Bucky. “You staying with me and Sam and Natasha bunking in the empty hut?”

“Per the usual arrangement, if you don’t mind?” Steve’s tone was shy and hesitant.

“Lunkhead,” Bucky said affectionately. “Let me get changed and you wake up Wilson and wrangle up Natasha. I assume she’s scouting around even though we’re safe?”

“You know Nat.” Steve gave a chuckle, resuming his lazy scratching of Cosmo’s coat. “She’s always on alert.”

Bucky grunted and then stood up, going to the chest with his clothes and, after surveying the new organization, took out a change of jeans and dark blue t-shirt. He pulled on some socks and stamped into the boots, after giving their cleaner appearance a wary look.

Steve gave Sam a light kick in the shins and Sam jerked awake with a grunt. “What?” he mumbled.

“We’re going to the city for supplies,” Steve told him. “You coming or going to you and Nat’s hut for further nappage?”

“I’m coming, I’m coming. I gotta buy more of that all-natural soap Bucky’s so keen on us using,” grumbled Sam, hauling himself to his feet.

“Wakanda is a somewhat clean environment, Wilson,” Bucky told him with a frown. “Don’t destroy it with chemical crap.”

Sam rolled his eyes. “Yeah yeah.”

Cosmo growled. This Sam was a pain in Bucky’s butt, he could tell. Sam looked over at Cosmo with a raised eyebrow but refrained from commenting on the dog’s growl. All three men exited the hut with Bucky stopping long enough to tell Cosmo, “Stay here, boy. I’ll bring you some dog treats and more food from the city. You’re still too skinny for my tastes.”

He vaguely heard Sam’s question of “He was malnourished?” as the men walked away.

Cosmo curled up tighter and began to think. Steve cared for Bucky. Bucky care for Steve. This Sam seemed to make Bucky peevish, therefore Cosmo disapproved of Sam. He would keep an eye on Sam. And who was this Natasha Bucky and Steve spoke of? Friend or foe like Sam? He would keep an eye on her too.

Steve obviously made Bucky happy. Cosmo approved of Steve. He didn’t approve of Sam. With a doggy snort of disgust, he settled in for a nap.


	7. Chapter 7

Bucky, Steve and Sam found Natasha Romanov conversing in fluent Wakandan with one of the village elders. ‘Show off,’ thought Bucky with a bit of fondness. ‘Where did she learn Wakandan?’

After explaining what they were up to, Nat decided to join them. Bucky took orders from the other villagers on what they would like from the city and commandeered the hovercraft car contraption the villagers used for long distance travel. All three clambered in and Sam drove. As they traveled, Nat filled Bucky in on what she suspected Hydra was up to now.

“You ever hear of a man named Dimitri Borislav?” asked Nat over the wind.

Bucky tensed and cast his mind back. “Vaguely. Any relation to Vladimir Borislav?”

“Son.”  
Bucky grunted. “He was one of the men in charge of the Winter Soldier’s conditioning,” he clipped out uncomfortably. He couldn’t say “my conditioning”. Both Steve and his Wakandan therapist told him that he was not the Winter Soldier and to stop thinking of himself as the mindless assassin. That poor bastard was not Bucky Barnes. He was Bucky Barnes, not the Winter Soldier.

“He did a lot of animal experiments too,” Nat continued, not blinking at Bucky’s wordage. “Sent animals into space, radiation treatments, that sort of thing.”  
Bucky tensed again, this time as memories came unbidden into his mind. He flinched at a particularly graphic one where pain flooded his body and rubber burned in his mouth. He buried his face in his hands and strenuously willed the memories away.

“I remember Vladimir,” he said hoarsely once he’d regained his composure. From Nat’s expression she understood perfectly what he was saying.

The tense line of Steve’s mouth told him that Steve understood too. Even Sam looked solemn, although he was concentrating on driving the hovercraft.

“Well, the charming Dimitri has been getting communications that I can’t translate. I’ve run it through the bastardized version of Tony’s Friday program that Rhodey slipped us a few months back. It’s not in any language known on this planet.” Nat was totally nonchalant about reporting that Hydra was communicating with space aliens.

Bucky’s gut twisted. “Can’t code break it?” he asked.

“I’m not a code breaker,” Nat told him imperiously but with a quirk of her lips that was wry. She didn’t admit incompetence often, he knew, so that she did so now was a compliment to how much she trusted him and the rest of the company.

“Hydra’s old,” Bucky told them. “Older than Johann Schmidt. I remember hearing things.”

“Yeah, we’ve been in contact with Nick Fury, who’s told us about what the underground S.H.I.E.L.D. has found out about Hydra. They are centuries if not millennia old,” Steve told him. “A secret society that makes the Illuminati look like penny amateurs.”

Bucky shuddered.

“Something’s happened in the last few weeks,” Natasha reported solemnly. “An uptick in communications. It’s got this Dimitri’s panties in a twist. Hydra communications all over the world swirling about like a tornado. They’re looking for something and they want it bad.”

Bucky hummed.

“At first we thought it was you, that they’d found you and were trying to figure out how to infiltrate Wakanda to capture you and bring the Winter Soldier back to the fold,” Natasha told him. He shuddered. “But the names Bucky Barnes or Winter Soldier do not feature in any of the dispatches.”

Bucky quirked an eyebrow at her. “But there is a name, right?”

Natasha shrugged. “I gave the communiques to Shuri last night when we arrived. Most of the dispatches are Middle Eastern and African. My Arabic is passable but my African dialects are negligible. She’s translating. All the communication is pointed at Africa. Whatever Hydra is after, it’s in Africa.”

Bucky frowned and a sense of unease fluttered through his stomach. “You’re not here for R and R, are you?” he accused Steve, who had the grace to look shame-faced.

“Now Buck,” he began but Bucky interrupted.

“Don’t you ‘now Buck’ me, you punk,” he spat, hurt. “I thought you were wanting some downtime, to spend time together,” he accused.

“I do!” Steve protested. “Just killing two birds with one stone.” When Bucky’s glowering didn’t dissipate, Steve scowled. “I’m protecting you, you idiot. If whatever Hydra wants is in east Africa, that’s focusing their attention too close to you than I like!”

Bucky pushed away the spike of hurt. Steve thought in a logical, strategic fashion. Always had, despite the hot-headed temper in his youth. Combining business with pleasure just seemed logical to Steve. It would never occur to Steve that him gallivanting off to protect the world while spending time with Bucky meant that Bucky didn’t feel like he had Steve’s undivided attention.

Nat spoke, interrupting the burgeoning fight between super soldiers. “Do you remember anything about any Hydra bases or activity in Africa when you were a prisoner?” 

He was glad she phrased his captivity that way. It wasn’t quite the truth but it was easier to think of himself as a prisoner than…whatever he’d been.

Bucky thought, casting his mind back to uncomfortable places in a bid to remember anything of use for Nat, Steve, Sam and whatever poor bastard had garnered Hydra’s attentions.

“Vladimir had interest in anything the cosmonauts found in space. He had copies of all the reports and physical exams of them before and after being in space. He was especially interested in cosmic radiation. Well, radiation of any sort, but cosmic especially,” Bucky finally said, slowly as he pulled information out of his memory. “He experimented constantly on animals. His labs, when I was in them, were full of caged animals of all sorts. Monkeys, mice, rats, cats, dogs…” His voice trailed off. Dogs.

Cosmonauts.

Cosmo.

Why did that name ring a bell?

He cast about in his thoughts. Cosmo wasn’t a recent memory for him, attached to the dog he mysteriously found outside his home the other morning. He’d heard it as the Winter Soldier. What was it?

Memories of being the Soldier were like looking at them through a heavy curtain sometimes. He could catch shadows of things but never concrete thoughts or images. This was one of those times.

He vaguely heard Steve’s worried, “Buck?” but ignored it. There was something about the name Cosmo. Experiments on animals that Vladimir Borislav was sure to produce…what?

“Shit!” he cried out. “Turn around!” he demanded.

Sam jolted but did so, making a complete turn in midair and heading back to the village. Bucky knew the African-American had responded with a soldier’s instincts to Bucky’s tone.

“Buck, what is it?”

“Cosmo.”

“Your dog?” Bucky looked at Steve and saw his adorable confused face.

“I think he’s more than just a dog.”

Steve looked startled but Nat, Bucky saw, was following Bucky’s train of thought.

“Vladimir Borislav did those experiments decades ago, Bucky,” she told him. “Any animals he experimented on would be long dead by now.”

“It can’t be a coincidence, after all I should be dead too, by rights,” Bucky insisted. “The dog appeared in the village the same night as a space pod crashed on the other side of the lake,” he told them. “Shuri and the Dora Milaje have searching high and low for someone who could have piloted it. What if it was Cosmo?”

“Uh Buck?” Steve’s tone had the element of uncertainty to it. “He’s a dog. I mean, he might have super intelligence but he’s still hampered by the fact he’s a dog.”

Sam slowed the hovercraft until it was creeping along.

Bucky blew out a breath. Steve was right. There was no way the dog could have piloted a space vehicle. For cripe’s sake, the dog didn’t even have opposable thumbs!

“Do we go to the village and interrogate the dog or go the city for supplies?” asked Sam. It sounded sarcastic but none was evident in his tone.

Everyone looked at Bucky. He felt foolish. He named a stray from a memory that the dog reminded him of. That was all. He was overreacting. “The city,” he mumbled.

Steve clapped a hand on his good shoulder and the conversation drifted to other things, such as Bucky’s daily routine, what his therapy appointments were like, and Shuri’s latest attempt at providing Bucky with a replacement arm. Nothing more was mentioned of the dog and his possible outer space antecedents.


	8. Chapter 8

Cosmo spent the time Bucky, Steve, Sam and Natasha was away watching goats. It was very boring. The goats weren’t doing anything but munching grass and wandering from their little meadow. When they did that, he would herd them back.

Mid-afternoon he was dozing, opening an eye every once in a while, to check on the goats when he smelled something he’d never smelled before. It was pungent and had a distinct predator smell to it. He raised his head and surveyed the herd of goats. They didn’t seem alarmed in anyway but the goats, Cosmo knew, weren’t the smartest things on the planet.

His unease grew and he rose to his feet, gave a quick stretch of his front and back legs and trotted the perimeter of the herd, nose in the air trying to pinpoint the smell. There, off to the right, in the brush along the edge of the meadow. The smell was strongest. He perked his ears up, trying to catch a noise.

A growl, deep and guttural. Cosmo had no idea what made it but it wasn’t friendly. Instincts told him whatever was there meant harm to either himself or his charges. He began to growl in return, stepping toward the goats while keeping an eye on the brush where the danger lurked.

The goats, reacting to his presence, shied away, putting more distance between themselves and the danger, which is what Cosmo wanted. They weren’t moving fast enough for Cosmo’s peace of mind so he barked, loudly, causing the goats to start and move away quicker.

Suddenly there was a roar and a huge, beige THING leapt out of the concealment of the brush. Cosmo froze in terror. It was much bigger than he was, with a wide mouth full of sharp teeth. Its paws had claws that were long and sharp-looking, obviously made for rending and tearing.

His barks became maddened from his fear and the goats reacted finally to the danger, bleating and stampeding away. In the distance, Cosmo heard men from the village’s other meadows shouting, other dogs barking. The thing before him roared and leapt at him.

Cosmo dodged and acted purely on instinct. He had to protect the goats, and himself, from this menace. He turned his head as he moved and this thing leapt over him, latching his teeth on the thing’s hind leg. It made a roaring sound and in mid-air turned on him, no longer focused on the goats.

While this was what Cosmo wanted, he was wondering if he was going to have cause to regret it.

* * *

The village was in an uproar when Bucky, Steve, Sam and Natasha returned from their shopping expedition. The Wakandans rushed the hovercraft before Sam even parked it, babbling and shouting in rapid fire Wakandan that none of them could follow. Bucky, the most fluent of them, caught only about one in word in five and what he was catching made his heart race.

“What’s going on?” asked Steve in bewilderment.

“All I’m catching is ‘dog’ and ‘lion’,” Bucky rasped. He grabbed the villager, G’natu, who spoke the best English and spoke slowly. “Is my dog dead from a lion?”

The man, Bucky’s age, maybe a few years older, shook his head negatively and returned in broken English. “Lion dead.”

“Who killed it?” Bucky asked.

“Dog by a tree.”

Bucky blinked and looked at Steve, who was staring back at him. The taller blond man was too far away to hear the conversation and Bucky gave a tremulous thumbs up. Steve obligingly smiled and opened his arms out to Natasha, who loaded them with boxes full of supplies.

Bucky allowed himself to be tugged into the heart of the village square and was soon standing over the unmoving body of a lioness. She was enormous, as was to be expected, and her neck was at a wrong angle, undoubtedly broken. She didn’t seem otherwise injured or showed signs of disease or weaknesses. 

Cosmo was sitting next to her body, his tail tentatively wagging at Bucky. The dog didn’t look proud of his accomplishment. To Bucky, the dog seemed more confused than anything. Like the canine wasn’t sure of his reception by his human owner.

Bucky knelt down in front of his dog and ran his hands over the rusty brown fur, looking for injuries of any kind and not finding any. Then he hugged the animal with relief and said in a heartfelt voice, “Good dog. Very good dog.”

Cosmo’s tail picked up speed and the animal gave a huffing bark of decided relief.

Bucky pulled back from the hug and buried his right hand in the animal’s scruff and scratched vigorously.

He sensed Steve, Sam and Natasha’s approach but didn’t look at them. Sam whistled at the lion’s body and Nat gave a small laugh of disbelief.

“I got a good dog, yeah?” Bucky said to them still staring at the dog in wonderment. “Smart as a whip, able to defend the weak from the strong.”

Bucky heard the smile in Steve’s voice. “Yeah, Buck, he’s a damned good dog.”

Cosmo gave a delighted woof.

“He killed the lion?” Sam’s voice evidenced disbelief. “That lion outweighs him by a mile! And lions are a hard kill!”

“I can’t get the whole story ‘cuz I don’t know the language real well,” Bucky told them, finally glancing at the little group gathered around, “but it looks like her neck is broken. I got the gist that they found her body by a tree.”

“He maneuvered the lion into smacking into a tree?” Nat sounded a bit skeptical.

Bucky shrugged. “He’s really smart.”

“No dog is _that_ smart,” muttered Sam. “You sure the villagers didn’t help or something?”

Bucky shook his head. “G’natu said they found the dog standing with the lion.” Bucky stood up and stared at the lioness’ body a long moment. Then he looked back at Cosmo, who’s tail was still whapping back and forth happily. “A damned good dog.”

Sam and Nat said nothing, just walked away. Steve smiled at the dog, who stared solemnly back. “Yeah, I think you got a good one, Buck. Smart and a good fighter.”

Bucky went to find out what was to be done with the lion’s carcass, Cosmo in tow, while Steve, Sam and Nat put up the supplies.


	9. Chapter 9

Cosmo ate a feast that night, one he felt was well-deserved. His foe had been mighty, as the Asgardians said, but he’d had the advantage of telekinesis. He’d merely tossed the lion away from him. He hadn’t intended for her to hit the tree hard enough to break her neck, but then, it was a lion eat dog world, so he didn’t feel too badly about it.

The villagers had told Bucky in a mixture of Wakandan and English that they would contact the royal game wardens to collect the dead animal. Did he want the skin as a trophy? Bucky had shaken his head but Cosmo was disappointed. He wanted the skin to sleep on, so that all lions who came to snack on his goats would know he was a lion killer. But alas, Bucky was squeamish so Cosmo just rested on his well-deserved laurels of pettings, scratches and a fine meal of delicious food. He even got treats that smelled of bacon, almost an entire bag full.

Steve and Bucky sat next to each other as the humans ate their evening meal. The three newcomers told Bucky and Cosmo, of their adventures in protecting the world from evildoers. While Cosmo didn’t think much of Sam, Natasha seemed okay and Steve made Bucky positively glow with happiness. Yes, Steve met with Cosmo’s approval. Bucky was lonely and often sad. Steve made that go away. Yes, Steve was acceptable.

Bucky and Sam often frowned or made sarcastic comments at each other. Cosmo sensed that Bucky was jealous of Sam’s place in Steve’s life. Cosmo didn’t quite understand all of these human dynamics but he understood that Steve and Bucky were mates of a sort and Bucky missed Steve each day the blond man was gone.

Sam took Steve away from Bucky. Cosmo decided that maybe Sam should go away. He got the impression that Natasha spent time with the other two men too, helping them on missions and gathering intelligence but she was no threat to Bucky’s sense of belonging to Steve. In fact, Cosmo thought Bucky and Natasha had a lot in common, therefore she was no threat.

Sam, though. He was going to have to go.

Cosmo tactfully slept outside, under the tree by the goat pen where Bucky first found him, to give Steve and Bucky privacy. Sam and Natasha slept in another hut further inside the village. It apparently had been set aside for them when they visited.

The next morning, Sam and Natasha joined Steve and Bucky for breakfast. There was bread for toast, a jam made of a local fruit, bacon and eggs. It didn’t seem like much of a Wakandan breakfast but Cosmo didn’t complain about the strips of bacon Steve slipped him when Bucky wasn’t looking. 

Bucky and Steve wandered down to Bucky’s bathing waterfall, Sam and Natasha in tow. The humans frolicked in the water and Cosmo swam, getting better each visit. As a lab animal locked in a cage, he’d never had a chance to swim anywhere but apparently, he instinctively knew how to do so. Sometimes instinct was a good thing, Cosmo decided.

Sam and Natasha stretched out under a tree, relaxing and dozing, while Bucky and Steve, as Natasha put it, canoodled in the water. Cosmo sensed his chance and plopped his furry butt in front of Sam and concentrated his thoughts at the man.

_You make Bucky unhappy. Go away._

Sam sat up, rubbed his eyes and frowned as he looked around.

_We don’t want you here, comrade, go away._

Sam rubbed his forehead and glanced at Cosmo, who tried to look disapproving. He wasn’t sure he succeeded.

“Huh.”

Natasha stirred and opened one green eye to peer at Sam. “What?”

“I swear I hear someone in my head, a bit of a Russian accent, telling me that I’m not wanted and that I make Bucky unhappy.”

_Now you are understanding. You need to leave. Have Steve stay but you go off and save the world or whatever you do._

Sam’s eyes fell on Cosmo, who curled a lip, stood up, turned his back on the man, put his tail dismissively in the air and stalked off.

“If I didn’t know better, I’d swear the dog was talking to me.”

Natasha snorted derisively, lounged back in the cool grass and fell back to sleep.

Cosmo noted Sam kept an eye on him all the same before he too fell into a nap.

Humans. So stupid.

* * *

Bucky and Steve had a relaxing day together, playing in the water, kissing, loving and just feeling at peace with one another. Bucky felt contented but knew it was a fleeting sensation, not designed to last. Steve wasn’t exclusively his and he would return to his missions soon enough.

The villagers hosted a feast to celebrate the death of the lion that night and Bucky was amused to see that Cosmo was fed so much food from almost everyone in the village that the dog practically waddled. If he wore trousers, he’d have undone the button and unzipped them for being so stuffed.

The Wakandans had taken to calling Cosmo “Outwitter of Lions”. Bucky wasn’t sure if that better or worse than White Wolf, his name among Wakandans. He’d asked Shuri why he was called that when no Wakandan had ever seen a wolf except maybe in pictures. She’d shrugged and said it was an old name and besides why was he complaining? It was a badass name, better, she’d sneered, than Winter Soldier.

Nat had donned traditional dress, as had Sam. Steve had dressed more comfortably in a pair of khaki pants, sandals and a brown t-shirt. Bucky thought it made Steve’s eyes bluer than the sky and his skin turned to molten gold.

Steve had been always been good-looking to Bucky, even when he was a hundred-pound punk soaking wet. His eyes were a crystal blue, intelligent and bright with mischief. His skin was golden peaches and cream that darkened a nice bronze in the sun instead of burning red like a lobster as befitted his Irish genes. Perhaps that was his father’s blood in him.

Now with his muscles, height and more confident bearing, Bucky felt his mind aflutter and his body a livewire when Steve looked at him with that soft, adoring smile he graced Bucky with. Bucky knew, even as the Winter Soldier, he’d missed that smile.  
Bucky sat next to Steve around a bonfire roasting a pig and nudged the other man’s shoulder playfully. “Hey, punk.”

“Hey, Buck.”

“Wanna go fool around?”

“I’m hungry.”

Bucky leered. “Me too.”

Steve laughed and slipped an arm around Bucky’s waist, glancing around self-consciously to see if anyone was watching them and then nipping a kiss onto Bucky’s lips. “I meant for food, jerk.”

Bucky grinned and returned the kiss with a hungrier one. He wasn’t as self-conscious as Steve. Many of the Wakandan women teased him about his love for Steve and the men didn’t seem to think it compromised Bucky’s masculine credentials. Years of having to hide, though, was ingrained more in Steve than in Bucky, whose memory of the past was patchy in some places.

He settled into Steve’s embrace and they watched the villagers dance, sing and be joyful around them. It wasn’t often that Bucky felt like he belonged but, in this moment, he did. He belonged with Steve and he belonged with this little Wakandan village that had taken him in as one of their own. Each had helped Bucky put the pieces of his life back together, one jigsaw puzzle at a time.


	10. Chapter 10

The next few days flew by in a haze of loving, teasing, affection and occasional headaches as Nat pressed Bucky for more information on what he knew of Hydra in Africa. As he’d rarely been sent on missions to Africa, he had a hard time answering her questions. He did so to the best of his ability, helping her find links and people to get the information who would know more than he.

Once he thought of the name of an operative in Johannesburg and she disappeared for two days, leaving Steve and Sam behind. She showed back up, not a hair ruffled but looking like the cat who got the canary. She went to Bucky’s bathing spot and came back cleaner, more relaxed and ready to speak of her triumph.

“Your lead was impeccable, Bucky,” she told them that night around a campfire Bucky made up outside his hut. She tossed in some dead grass, causing them to burn up quickly, flickering like fireflies. “He was a bountiful source of Hydra’s activities in Africa. I dropped a line to King T’Challa and he’s coming out with Okoye to discuss what I found. Apparently T’Challa doesn’t want Hydra anywhere near Wakanda if he can help it.”

“I don’t blame him,” Sam said, staring into the fire and poking it with a stick to get the logs to shift a bit so that more could be added. “He’s got a damned good thing here. He doesn’t need Hydra fucking it up.”

“Yes.” Natasha pondered her words a moment and Bucky tensed. This was where she suggested a mission for the other three and Steve would leave him. “Almost every country except Wakanda has at least one Hydra base, some of them quite extensive. We could hit some of them, use Wakanda as a base of operations, see what we can dig up and disrupt, make their lives a bit more miserable.”

Steve hummed thoughtfully and tilted his head up to look at the stars. Bucky knew from staring up at them himself, it was a clear view. Sometimes the Milky Way ghosted across the stars, mysterious and awe-inspiring.

“T’Challa wants us to look at this space pod that crashed too,” he commented. “There’s apparently alien writing on it and he suspects it might be similar to the writing we’ve been trying to translate that we found associated with Hydra’s communications.”  
Out of the corner of his eye, Bucky saw Cosmo’s head raise up. The dog had been peaceably snoozing just out of reach of the flames, cozying up to the warmth as it was a cool night. The dog was amazing at picking up people’s feelings. He seemed to know when someone needed a dog to pet after a nightmare. Just last night, the dog had allowed Steve to cry into his fur after being roused from a nightmare. Bucky had feigned sleep; Steve would bottle everything up if he thought someone was aware of his distress, ever the martyr. Cosmo was a great companion. Even Sam had said that Cosmo would do good training as a therapy animal, even though there seemed to be some hostility on Cosmo’s part to the black American.

“We can do that tomorrow then. We can start hitting bases in countries close to Wakanda and work our way out,” Nat said decisively, with a toss of her blonde hair. Then, as she always did, she turned to Bucky. “Want to come with?” She asked every time they left on a mission.

And every time he answered, “No thanks. I’ve got goats to tend.”

Nat, per usual, left it at that.

Cosmo’s head went back on his paws and for a fleeting moment, Bucky swore he heard a lightly Russian accented voice say in his head _good_.

He shook his head. He’d been hearing voices, this Russian accented voice occasionally. He needed to talk to his therapist about it. Was it a personality pushing through, the Soldier perhaps? Or was he just going mad? Neither was a comforting thought, but who knew what kind of damage his brain had sustained over the years of torment, experimentation and brutality.

Nat and Sam eventually rolled to their feet after plans were made to go to the capital city in the morning after breakfast. They headed for their hut and Bucky and Steve sat in front of the fire until it died to coals. Bucky kicked some dirt over it to bank it some more and then snapped his fingers to get Cosmo’s attention. “You sleeping with us or out here, pup?”

The dog stood up lazily, gave a tremendous stretch then trotted into the hut. Steve gave a disbelieving laugh. “He’s smarter than a whip!” he marveled.

Bucky grinned arrogantly, like a proud father of his child. “Smartest dog in Wakanda!” he quipped, grabbing Steve’s hand and tugging him into the hut. “Now shut up about my dog and cuddle me til we fall asleep. We should make out, but I’m tired.” His voice took on a sad tone. “You’ll be gone on another mission soon enough. I want to soak up all the time I can with you.”

Steve paused before the door of the hut and brushed Bucky’s long hair from his face. “No matter where I am in the world, Buck, I’m always with you, surely you know that.”

Bucky looked down, ashamed at how needy he was feeling. “I know,” he said hoarsely. “But we’ve been so long apart. The world is more accepting of us now but still it conspires to keep us apart.”

Steve blew out a breath and tugged Bucky in for a lingering kiss. “Doesn’t matter. One day I’ll be able to come home to you forever, I promise. One day it’ll be enough penance for both of us.”

Bucky sagged into Steve’s embrace, relishing the feel of his love’s strong arms and tight hold. It made him feel safe, safer than he’d felt in a long, long time.

“I know, punk, I know. I just wish…” He let his voice trail off, not sure what he wanted to say that wouldn’t make Steve feel bad about what he had to do.

“I know, Buck, I know,” Steve said, in that distinctive Steve way that seemed to understand what Bucky wasn’t saying. “But with this current plan, you’ll see me more often, I’ll be here more often, not halfway around the world and only a voice on the end of a burner phone.”

Bucky gave a half-hearted smile, tugged Steve into the darkness of the hut and said softly, “Yeah, there’s that.”

* * *

The next morning one of the other village men took Bucky’s goats to a meadow with his own and Cosmo found himself on a hover transport skimming along the African plains towards a large mountain in the distance. Since landing on Earth, he’d never seen civilization other than the village he lived in. He’d seen technology in the village beyond the norm of the primitive means the villagers lived in so he was a bit excited to see how Earth had progressed technology-wise since he left the planet almost sixty years ago.

Sam was driving and seemed competent so Cosmo refrained from harassing the man via telepathy and instead focused on the joys of having a breeze running through his fur, tongue lolling out as he panted away the heat of the harsh African sun. He was plopped next to Natasha, who was petting him absently as she gazed at the beauty of nature flying by at a high rate of speed. Bucky and Steve were seated behind them, holding hands and talking so softly that Cosmo couldn’t hear them over the rush of wind and the hovercraft’s whining engine.

The mountain in the distance grew closer and closer but despite how rough looking the terrain was, the hovercraft skimmed over it easily and without mishap. Cosmo grew concerned though when Sam didn’t slow down or make any maneuvers as the hovercraft got closer and closer to the mountain.

If anything, he sped up.

Was the human insane?

Cosmo glanced at Natasha but she seemed unconcerned, still running her fingers absently through his fur.

He glanced forward again. The mountain was awful close and getting closer by the second. The ground was rockier but it was still a smooth ride. Surely the underside would be hitting those larger rocks sticking out of the ground that Sam was running right over?

The mountain loomed over them, a stark rock face pockmarked with half-dead vegetation. Still Sam didn’t slow down.  
Cosmo tensed and quivered, causing Natasha to glance down at him. “What’s the matter, boy?” she asked.

_We’re going to crash. Sam is crazy!_

Natasha blinked in surprise a moment and then looked instinctively forward. Cosmo gave a yelp just as the hovercraft was mere feet from the rockface and closed his eyes. They were going to die because Sam was an idiot.

Nothing happened.

Cosmo opened one eye and was amazed to find himself on the outskirts of a giant city, with tall buildings, teaming with people wearing every sort of clothing imaginable. The hovercraft slowed down and angled off to not hit any of the crowds. There were other hovercrafts parked where Sam was headed and Sam eased theirs into a spot, the hovercraft humming to nothingness, settling down on the ground.

It was a hologram, Cosmo realized. The mountain was a fake, designed to hide away this jewel of a city. He sniffed tentatively, expecting to smell the burn of pollution in his nostrils but there was nothing. It was clean. The noise was from voices and machinery but it was exciting not irritating.

The humans clambered out of the hovercraft and Bucky motioned for Cosmo to get out too, tapping his thigh and saying cheerfully, “Come on, boy!”

Cosmo stuck to Bucky like glue, afraid of becoming lost. The humans walked through a large marketplace spanning the entire length of a long avenue. There was a mountain of sorts looming over the city, but carved within was a palace, gleaming with glass and metal, sculpture and gardens. This must be where the occasionally visiting Princess Shuri lived with her brother, King T’Challa, whom Cosmo had never met but heard much about.

Bucky, Steve, Sam and Natasha would occasionally stop at a stall to look at the wares but except for Natasha’s one purchase of something small that Cosmo couldn’t see, they didn’t buy anything. Bucky did look down at Cosmo once and ask, “Should I find him something to put around his neck that identifies him as mine?”

Steve shrugged. “Up to you Bucky. I think he’s handsome as is.”

Steve was his favorite, after Bucky of course. He looked at Sam who was frowning at the dog and mentally chided, Shut up. Sam jerked in surprise, shook his head as if he was plagued by a fly and they continued on.

They reached a gate, guarded by two fierce looking warrior women in red and gold, with gleaming metal tipped spears. They nodded to the five of them stoically and let them pass without demanding anything. Interesting. One of the women gave the dog a small smile. Clearly a woman of discerning taste.

They entered a corridor white washed and bright with occasional paintings or murals on the walls. Not being versed in art, Cosmo ignored it and since the humans didn’t stop to gawk, he figured they’d seen it before.

At the end of corridor was an elevator, which they all trooped into. Cosmo plopped his butt down and felt the elevator rise after Steve pushed a button by the door. The elevator doors opened into another corridor after they rode for a minute.

Steve led the way to another door guarded by warrior women and then he stopped. “Good morning, ladies,” he said deferentially. “The king is expecting us at his convenience.”

Neither woman spoke but one opened the door, slipped inside while the other scowled at them. She didn’t seem angry and after a quick perusal of her mind, Cosmo determined she was merely scowling because it was expected of her. All was well. No one was in trouble.

The woman who left reappeared and motioned them inside with a terse, “He will see you for a few moments and then you must speak with Princess Shuri in her lab.”

Steve nodded and went inside, followed by everyone else, Cosmo included.

It was a meeting room, with chairs lined up on either side in front of another that looked like a throne. A dark-skinned man of average height and build sat upon it, his face bearded and his brown eyes alert and interested in their coming. Cosmo didn’t sense any animosity from the man.

Everyone bowed respectfully but the man raised them up, stepped down from his dais and hugged them briefly. “Welcome, my friends!” he greeted expansively and then glanced down at Cosmo. “Is this the lion killer?”

Bucky smiled at Cosmo, who wagged his tail in a friendly manner. “The one and only.”

The man who was undoubtedly King T’Challa knelt down in front of Cosmo and ruffled his ears warmly. “A most remarkable animal. Shuri is right. He doesn’t look like the typical African dog. I would love to know where he came from.”

Bucky gave a huffing laugh. “Me too.”

T’Challa quit scratching Cosmo and stood up. “I read your email this morning about your plans regarding Hydra’s presence in Africa. I agree with them and will offer whatever support you need. You may, of course, use Wakanda as a base of operations and I will fund you and supply you with whatever you require. Africa has enough challenges, we do not need Hydra adding to them.”  
Natasha shifted her weight from one foot to the other and Cosmo shifted his attention from the authoritarian man before them to her. “Thank you, T’Challa. I think we’re going to start with your northern neighbor. Hydra has two bases, one a training ground. A bit of mayhem and destruction can’t go amiss.”

T’Challa was amused by her words, per Cosmo’s understanding of human facial expressions. “Indeed. Make a list of what you need and give it to Okoye. We will have it to you by the end of the week along with a retrofit of your quinjet.” He got a gleam in his eye that boded ill for his enemies. “Shuri is eager to place a better cloaking technology to it. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if she’s halfway done adding it to your quinjet as we speak.”

Sam grinned. “She’s a genius. Who’s gonna argue with a genius?”

T’Challa laughed. “Certainly not me.” He held up his hands as if in surrender. “I have many meetings with various tribal leaders all morning but please, join me for lunch in the west balcony. The gardens there are in full bloom.” He glanced down at Cosmo. “What does the lion killer eat?”

“I haven’t found anything he doesn’t eat,” confessed Bucky.

“Then a meal fit for a great warrior it will be,” T’Challa declared and then turned back to take his seat on the throne.

Knowing they were dismissed from the busy statesman’s presence, everyone bowed respectfully and walked out of the presence chamber, past the two female guards, who nodded respectfully at them and back towards the elevator.

Cosmo liked King T’Challa. He obviously understood the finer points of defending defenseless goats from mean, nasty, hungry lions.


	11. Chapter 11

Princess Shuri gave Cosmo his proper due, Bucky noted with a grin, exclaiming over the dog’s presence with a crowed, “Lion Killer!” and a copious amount of ear scratches. The dog’s tail wagged ferociously and only then did Shuri greet everyone else. “White Wolf, Captain, Falcon, Widow.”

Steve grinned and Bucky laughed. “Your Highness,” he said, “yes, we brought the lion killer. You told me to.”

“Indeed.” She grinned mischievously at him and sauntered over to her work table. It was cluttered with metal bits, machine parts, drills, screwdrivers and the gods knew what else. Wires stuck out of some of the machinery but none of them looked live.  
She dug around for a minute and then turned around raising something triumphantly in her hand. It took Bucky a moment to realize it was a collar. He glanced at the dog who, if a dog could, looked skeptical. He patted the dog congenially on the head and said to Shuri, “You think he’s going to get lost and need a collar for someone to bring him home?”

She smirked and walked back to them, kneeling down in front of the brown canine. She clasped the collar around his neck and brushed a finger on the name tag. It was in the shape of a lion’s head. Bucky leaned down for a closer look. ‘Cosmo’ it read ‘The Lion Killer’. He laughed. “Appropriate.”

She adjusted the collar more comfortably around the dog’s neck and gave the animal an affectionate scratch on his ruff. “A find adornment for a fine animal,” she declared.

Bucky glanced at his other companions. Steve was grinning broadly, Natasha was smirking her usual smirk, and even Sam had a bit of a smile playing about his lips. “He looks mighty fine, indeed,” Bucky agreed.

Cosmo’s tail never stopped wagging.

Shuri stood up and turned back to her work table, waving her hands in the air and pulling up a screen in mid-air. On it were specs for the quinjet. “I have retrofitted the concealment elements of the quinjet and fudged Stark’s arc reactor power source for more efficiency.”

Natasha and Sam walked over to look at the schematics while Steve viewed the weapons she had on her table. He picked up one pistol and hefted it out as if sighting and firing. “Feels good in my hand,” he said objectively. He gave Shuri an inquiring glance. “One of yours?”

She grinned evilly. “Tranquilizer, for when you need to take prisoners. I thought having it disguised as a bullet firing weapon would be more intimidating.”

Steve grinned briefly, his white teeth flashing in his brown-blond stubbled beard. He hadn’t shaved since coming to Wakanda and Bucky thought it made him look rakish. Very un-Steve like.

Bucky wandered the lab as well, poking here and there, careful not to disturb what he would loosely call Shuri’s organizational system. He hesitated at a far table and turned to Shuri with a raised eyebrow. “Is this for me?” he asked.

Shuri looked anxious for a moment before her natural charm and confidence overcame it. “It’s not finished yet,” she told him hesitantly, “but yes, eventually, that will be your new arm.” She paused. “If you want it.”

Bucky pondered a moment, aware of all eyes on him to gauge his reaction. “Might come in handy during a fight,” he acknowledged and turned away. He was adjusting to life without his left arm, accepting it as penance for his crimes as the Winter Soldier. Besides, he lost it doing the right thing during the last World War. It was right that it remained gone.

The other four talked shop while Bucky poked around, occasionally distracting Shuri with questions about this spec or that design feature. He sat down next to his dog and idly scratched the animal who was watching everyone with an observant intentness.

* * *

Cosmo was amazed at the technology of Wakanda as he watched the princess show everyone her latest inventions. It was a far cry from what he’d become used to seeing in the few alien societies he’d been introduced to but also nothing like what he remembered from his time on Earth as well.

Getting bored with the technical talk, he wandered the lab, sniffing here and there the smells of metal, oil, plastic, electricity and, oddly, flowers. He walked by Shuri and realized the flowers came from whatever perfume she was wearing. It suited her, he decided with a doggy sneeze.

He settled down on the cool lab floor and dozed. He felt Bucky sit next to him and felt his strong hands comb through his fur and relaxed further. Bucky was a good man. Cosmo was lucky to have found him so quickly after landing on Earth.

There was a click that seemed out of place and Cosmo raised his head to find the source. Steve was crouched a bit away from them and holding a square object in his hand that Cosmo recognized as a portable phone. It had camera features as well. Ah. Steve had taken a picture of himself and Bucky.

“Now I have something to remember my two favorite guys by,” Steve smiled softly. Cosmo gave a half-hearted wag of agreement and tucked himself back into a ball to nap.

Bucky continued to scratch and occasionally throw in a comment on the plans and schemes the others were hatching and Cosmo only paid half-attention, relishing the cool floor on his belly and the hand scratching his fur. This was a dog’s life. He wouldn’t trade it for anything. 

Bucky was home.

Cosmo jerked awake at that thought in surprise but relaxed when Bucky soothed him with a kiss on top of his head. He had always wanted a home, after all, when he was an experiment in a cold Russian laboratory. He’d dreamed of a loving home his entire captivity with the Collector, paraded around as a curiosity to the Collector’s guests. Cosmo thought he was destined to always live in a cage, but he’d grabbed up freedom at his first opportunity, commandeering a space pod and, using his intelligence, guided it to his planet of origin.

Doubtless the Collector would be looking for him, loathe as the man was to give up anything he’d collected. Yet on a planet full of dogs, finding a specific one would be worse than a needle in haystack.

Cosmo had a home, his dream, and a master who was a friend and compatriot. He wouldn’t give Bucky up for nothing. Sure, their lives were primitive compared to what Cosmo had seen around them, but he didn’t begrudge it. It gave Cosmo a purpose and the simple life seemed to be what Bucky needed to heal.

Cosmo looked up and Bucky and sleepily thought at his human. _Friends forever._ Bucky must have gotten the message and thought it was his own thoughts, for his scratching increased, he grinned and said, “Yeah, pal, friends forever.”


	12. Chapter 12

Within two days Steve’s team was ready to go. Steve and Bucky clutched at each other and Bucky relished the deep kiss Steve gave him good-bye while Sam and Natasha discreetly turned away. Then the blond super soldier strode away purposefully, off to battle dragons. Bucky felt his heart sink as Steve glanced over his shoulder and gave him a wistful, heart stopping smile farewell along with a little wave. Bucky returned the smile and gesture until the three of them were specs in the distance on their quinjet, delivered to them by Shuri just the day before.

Bucky glanced down at Cosmo, who was staring at the spec in the sky as well, his pants from the African heat comforting Bucky strangely. “Okay, boy, time to do our job of holding down the home front.” Cosmo stood up, barked and headed for the goat pen.  
Not for the first time, Bucky marveled at how well the dog seemed to pick up what Bucky was saying to him.

They let the goats out and herded them to their meadow for grazing. Bucky lazed under a tree, watching as Cosmo settled himself under another tree and kept a close eye on the not-to-bright goats. The day waned into afternoon and soon Bucky roused himself to snack on his brought lunch, throwing Cosmo some meaty bits every once in a while. He washed it all down with some lukewarm tea, not having ice to cool it down with. It was made from a local plant and had a fruity flavor to it.

The afternoon progressed to evening and Bucky directed Cosmo to round up the goats and drive them to their pen for the evening. He slipped the rope lock over the gate, tested it with a jerk to make sure it was secure and, with a wave at Cosmo to follow, headed for the edge of the little lake the village was situated on. 

The villagers were bemused by Bucky’s insistence in swimming after a long hot day, or bathing in his waterfall. They were content to rinse off the day’s exertions with a rag and bowl of water. The water, though, eased the strain in Bucky’s muscles and he enjoyed the free feeling floating in the water gave him.

Cosmo splashed around enthusiastically, causing Bucky to laugh. He sobered when he realized by now Steve, Sam and Natasha would be reconnoitering the base they were going to turn to rubble. He ducked himself under the water, feeling the coolness envelope him. He sank to the bottom, being still in the shallow area of the lake, resting a moment cross-legged at the sandy bottom, eyes closed. The strain on his lungs forced him upwards, breaking the surface with a gasp for air.

He opened his eyes and looked to the shore. Cosmo had finished doggy paddling and had been staring at where Bucky had been, eyes wide and stiff-legged in alarm. Bucky grinned and chuckled. Cosmo’s tail wagged once, twice and Bucky swore the animal was concerned.

‘Good dog’, he thought fondly. Though he’d only had Cosmo not even a month, he couldn’t imagine his life without his canine companion. It filled a hole he hadn’t realized was there, having a thing depend on him for its welfare and offering companionship and undisguised affection in return. For a man deprived of any sort of humanity for decades, the dog was a balm on his bruised soul.

He swam to shore and dragged himself onto the grass far enough away from the edge that he wouldn’t be laying in the mud. He was wearing modern underwear but had taken off his Wakandan wrap that he habitually wore.

He wrinkled his nose involuntarily at the wet dog smell as Cosmo flopped down next to him with a distinctly doggy huff of contentment.

“Steve and them will be back soon,” he told Cosmo. “They always blow in like the wind, full of plans and energy, disrupting everything, but it’s a welcome disruption.”

Cosmo huffed a reply that to Bucky sounded distinctly like ‘I see’. He turned his head back to the stars overhead. The Milky Way floated over some of them like a cosmic cloud.

“I need to learn the constellations as the Wakandans see them. Totally different area of the world, the sky doesn’t look the same as it does in New York,” he continued as if the dog understood him. “I sometimes keep meaning to ask Shuri but then I forget.”

He glanced at the dog, his eyes drawn to the animal’s black collar and glinting tag. The moonlight was bright enough that Bucky, if he’d been energetic enough to bother, would have been able to read the dog’s pronounced ‘lion killer’ designation on it.  
Bucky, ignoring the wet fur, put his hand on Cosmo’s neck and scratched idly, turning his attention back to the heavens. “Wanna sleep out here?” he asked conversationally. “It’s cooler than the hut, I’m betting.”

That Russian voice that sometimes intruded on his thoughts came unbidden, making Bucky tense. I suppose.

Bucky shivered. He really needed to mention that voice to someone. It was starting to become unnerving.

* * *

Cosmo awoke to birdsong and the rustling of wind through the trees. It was barely dawn and he was still sleeping beside Bucky at the lake’s edge. He stood up and stretched the way he liked, one paw at a time, first front legs, then back legs and then cracking the spine in an arch. He sat down to scratch his ear and snorted at himself.

Bucky stirred next to him, eyes opening and blinking sleepily at the encroaching sun. The human yawned and gave a luxurious stretch himself. There was a rumble from someone’s stomach but Cosmo wasn’t entirely sure it was his or Bucky’s.

Bucky laughed, the carefree sound Cosmo liked best, and rolled to his feet, gathering his discarded clothes from last night and started back to the hut. Cosmo amiably followed along. He was assured of at least kibble this morning, maybe with a drizzle of gravy over it.

After breakfast, they followed the routine of letting the goats out but Cosmo noticed Bucky was unusually quiet. Was he missing Steve? Worried about his friends on their mission? These Hydra clowns didn’t sound too tough for Steve, Sam and Natasha to take on, to Cosmo’s way of thinking, but he knew Bucky had bad memories of being with Hydra so perhaps Cosmo was underestimating Hydra.

He resisted the urge to go pilfering through Bucky’s thoughts and offering mental reassurances. Too much mental interference and Bucky would start to suspect there was more to his dog than met the eye.

The goats were grazing in their meadow and everyone guarded them in the shade of a tree. About half way through the day, Cosmo smelled something lion-like and stood up. He patrolled the goat herd but didn’t smell it again and relaxed. Resolved to stay alert just in case, especially now that Bucky was here, Cosmo kept a sharp eye and ear out the rest of the day.

At dusk, they repeated the previous night’s routine of putting the goats back in their pen and then swimming. This time Bucky went back to the hut and Cosmo followed. All day he hadn’t gotten a good scratch, even absent-mindedly. It was unlike Bucky to be so standoffish to his dog and Cosmo resolved to find out what the problem was.

Bucky lit a lamp and brought out a book, well-worn and to Cosmo’s surprise, in Russian. He recognized the lettering even if he didn’t read the words. Bucky settled down on his pallet and read for a long time. Cosmo watched his human for a bit and noticed Bucky never turned the page and his eyes didn’t follow the words on the page. The book was a cover for his worry, Cosmo decided.

Silently, Cosmo willed Steve to call and tell Bucky all was well and that they would be coming home soon.

The next two days they followed the routine, wake, breakfast, goats to the meadow, herd the goats to their pen at dusk, swim, dinner and Bucky would pretend to read until his eyes drooped. Occasionally Bucky would pet or hug Cosmo, which mollified the dog a little.

On the third morning as they consumed their breakfast there was a ping from the pack that Bucky stored his cell phone. Bucky practically destroyed the hut getting to the phone. It wasn’t a call, Cosmo surmised, as Bucky didn’t put the phone to his ear to talk. Instead he stared at the screen, his concern turning to fear and then fraught with anger.

“Damned punk!” Bucky slammed the phone down. Cosmo was glad this was a phone Princess Shuri gave Bucky so it could handle a little abuse. He stood up and strode purposefully to the hut’s entrance. “Come on, Cosmo,” he snapped.

Confused but sensing Bucky needed him, Cosmo followed him out the door and into the village proper. Bucky spoke briefly to one of the village men about the goats and then headed for the hover transport. Man and dog hopped in and Bucky headed across the African plains to the capital city of Wakanda.

Sensing Bucky wasn’t going to confide out loud to his dog, Cosmo cautiously sent out a telepathic whisper to Bucky’s mind. If he could have gasped, he would have. Steve had been captured! Hurt! Cosmo, now worried himself, urged Bucky to drive faster so they could get to Steve’s side and offer aide.


	13. Chapter 13

“He’s fine!” Natasha blocked Bucky from entering Steve’s sick room in a self-righteous rage. “They just smacked him around a little. However, we lost intel.”

Bucky growled but nodded for her to continue.

“They took his phone and comm units. Shuri is setting us up but now Hydra knows we’re getting supplies from Wakanda and are likely using Wakanda as a base of operations,” Natasha reported matter-of-factly.

Bucky appreciated the attempt at distraction, but he needed to see Steve, reassure himself that Steve was fine.

Natasha, sensing that, nodded once as if to herself and stepped aside. Bucky opened the door and surveyed the room. There were no beeping machines, no bags of fluids draining into Steve’s veins, and Steve looked annoyed at the fussing more than anything.

“Damn you!” he shouted and Steve looked up in surprise at the outburst. Sam was sitting next to the bed and grimaced at Bucky.

“I’m fine, Buck,” Steve started.

“Careless, reckless – “ Bucky began a diatribe, but Sam held up a hand in such an authoritative gesture that Bucky automatically shut up despite himself.

“He’s fine. Just a couple bruised ribs and a black eye,” Sam told him. “They’d just figured out they had Captain America in their clutches when Nat and I busted in for a rescue. These guys weren’t the sharpest tools in the shed.”

Bucky growled again and strode to Steve’s bedside. He was still in his dusty, worn-out star-spangled suit that he still wore because it had the proper protection for things like vital organs and the like. Shuri had often offered Steve another suit and identity but Steve always gently refused.

Steve stared up at him with a quirked smile and Bucky felt himself relax from the high alert he’d been on since Natasha’s text that Steve had been captured, hurt and they were in the capital city. His hand hovered over Steve’s shoulder hesitantly, as if afraid to touch, and Steve reached out to grasp it, tangling their fingers together affectionately.

“I promise, I’m fine, Bucky,” reassured Steve in a quiet voice and Bucky swallowed back a biting retort, nodding instead.

Sam stood up and headed for the door. “I’m gonna go get cleaned up and me and Nat are going to work up options with T’Challa on how to handle this latest development.” He paused at the door and looked over his shoulder. “Bucky, he stays in bed until the bruising fades from his ribs.”

“He ain’t moving a muscle,” Bucky said tightly, lapsing into a Brooklyn drawl in his agitation.

Sam glanced down at Cosmo, causing Bucky to jerk in surprise. He’d forgotten about the dog. He jerked his head at the dog, who understood the motion as to mean ‘come here’. The dog moved further into the room and settled into a corner, a wary eye on everyone.

Steve had closed his eyes during Bucky and Sam’s exchange, his face pinched slightly with discomfort, but Bucky could tell Steve wasn’t in severe pain. He let go of Steve’s hand to walk around the bed to the chair Sam vacated and sat down. Cosmo moved to sit beside him and both dog and man stared at Steve with almost identical accusing stares.

“Start from the beginning,” Bucky rasped out finally.

Steve jolted as if he’d half-fallen asleep but began to talk. “We hit the base as we planned about midnight. Sparse guards on duty, almost everything dark and quiet. It was smooth sailing until we split up.”

“Why’d you split up?” interrupted Bucky.

“Three different doors.”

Bucky scowled but refrained from commenting on them being stupid.

“I entered my door and found just an empty office. I headed for the computer, hacking in the way Nat taught me. I pulled the flash drive that Shuri gave us to download intel on out and had just plugged it in when all hell broke loose.”

“Uh-huh,” Bucky encouraged.

“I don’t know if me accessing that computer alerted someone or what, but guards came pouring into the room, armed to the teeth. They drug me out of the office and to this…” He seemed to flounder for words. “Interrogation room, I guess. But there were chains on the wall but it wasn’t like a jail cell.”

Steve’s blue eyes opened to look at Bucky, as if gauging a reaction, so Bucky nodded understanding.

“They handcuffed both my hands and feet to a metal chair, began questioning me in some African language, but I didn’t understand them. They left me alone once they realized that and a few minutes later a guy comes in able to speak English.” Steve hesitated. “He was one of the head Hydra guys your South African informant said was still active.”

Bucky grimaced and rolled his shoulders. “Go on,” he said in a soft voice.

Steve sighed and continued his story. “He questioned me, one after another, but I kept my mouth shut. I didn’t think they’d found Sam and Natasha and didn’t want them to know they were in the building too. He had me searched. They found our comms and my phone and confiscated them.” Steve sighed again and shrugged, wincing as he did so. “They’ve probably broken the encryption on the phone by now. I lost the photos of you.”

“You can take more,” Bucky ground out. “What did they do next?”

“A pipe. Smacking me in the ribs when I wouldn’t cooperate. They weren’t at it long. There were gun shots, yelling and Nat and Sam appeared, kicking ass and taking names. The head guy managed to slip out in the melee, so he’s somewhere, but the rest are taken care of.”

“Sloppy,” Bucky snapped. “He’s the one you’ll have to worry about.”

“I know.” Steve opened his eyes again and stared at Bucky. “This shit happens, y’know. You can’t predict every variable in a mission, you know that better than anyone. We have to readjust our plans now that Hydra knows we’re in the vicinity and coming for them, but it’s still workable. They wouldn’t dare come to Wakanda. The Wakandans would flatten them like bugs on a windshield.”

There was truth to the words but Bucky was only slightly mollified. “Once you’re cleared, all of you are coming back to the village. We’re not half-assing this anymore. Concrete plans, full recon to know every bit of the layout of where ever you’re going. That’s what these fancy-assed satellites are good for. None of this going off half-cocked like some macho John Wayne.” He stood up to loom over Steve’s bed. “Got it?”

Steve, properly cowed but still with a mischievous twinkle in his blue eyes, nodded amiably, “Sure, Bucky. You are now operational handler for our missions from here on out.”

“Let’s not get carried away,” Bucky told him gruffly, leaning over for a peck on the lips. “Glad you’re okay, punk. You had me and the dog worried about you.”

Steve gave a lopsided smile and leaned over enough to gaze at the dog. “Hey, boy, you being good?” Cosmo’s tail gave a half-hearted wag in response.

Bucky collapsed back in the chair and reached around to pet Cosmo briefly. “All right, take a nap, you idiot. This time you took all the stupid with you.”

Steve closed his eyes and mumbled, “Whatever you say, Buck,” before he drifted off to sleep.

* * *

Cosmo listened to Steve’s story and was glad the circumstances had not been worse. He did not relish Bucky being told Steve would never come back. He knew his human wouldn’t take the news well at all.

All morning until lunch, Steve slept. Cosmo kept glancing at Bucky every so often but he was lost in thought, his eyes far away. A couple times Nat or Sam came in, saw all was well and left without a word.

Lunch rolled around and Steve, once awake, insisted he could get up without help to go the bathroom. He walked gingerly but not without any remarkable distress. Cosmo could sense Bucky’s worry but Cosmo thought it misplaced. Steve was a hulking man, strong and intelligent. He didn’t get Bucky’s worry over the bigger, taller man. Maybe it was a love thing for humans.

Lunch was served in a nearby room overlooking some fragrant gardens. Bucky and Steve slipped Cosmo some rich and spicy meat chunks and even occasionally King T’Challa did the same. This T’Challa was okay in Cosmo’s book. Once everyone’s appetite was sated, the humans relaxed a bit and began to strategize.

“Shuri has not been able to access your phone to sabotage it. Likely they’ve already broken the encryption and accessed everything you had on there,” T’Challa told them soberly.

Cosmo inwardly frowned. These Hydra morons were smarter than Cosmo thought. Not just thugs, then.

T’Challa continued, naturally unaware of the dog’s thoughts. “We will issue you new equipment, of course, but our technology is no longer a secret, thanks to my reveal to the world. They will know you work from this country.”

Sam blew out a breath. “Sorry about that,” he said apologetically.

T’Challa waved that away as if unconcerned. “We are a tight knit community,” he told them. “Strangers are always noted and we have spies everywhere. I will know the moment someone unfamiliar appears within our borders.”

“And the mountain lords?” asked Natasha. “Will they report strangers?”

T’Challa laughed. “That’s assuming M’Baku let’s any of them live?” he asked with a jovial air. “The mountain tribes barely suffer the rest of us Wakandans. An outsider would suffer grave consequences for trespassing, perhaps even their life.”

Reassured, Natasha nodded.

“Now, you need to rest a few days and make new, better plans,” T’Challa concluded. “You will, of course, let me know if you need anything.” He gave them a stern look, one after another. “I mean, anything,” he stressed.

Sam raised his hands in surrender with a big grin on his face. Cosmo sniffed to himself. Sam seemed almost a simpleton sometimes. He seemed too happy for the hard life he was living.

Natasha leaned back in her chair and pursed her lips before listing equipment Cosmo had never heard of nor could discern what they would be for. T’Challa listened intently as Natasha spoke, nodded and said, “Yes, that can all be arranged.”

“And I want Nakia or Okoye,” Natasha added.

Cosmo remembered Okoye, a fierce warrior woman and the head of T’Challa’s female bodyguards and royal guards. This Nakia he knew nothing of.

T’Challa pursed his lips in consideration. “I can spare Okoye but Nakia in the United States working on another project.”

Natasha nodded but subsided her demands.

“I’d like to know what tipped off Hydra I was there,” Steve told them. “There was absolutely no give away they were aware of us until they entered that office and took me prisoner.”

T’Challa launched into a complicated technical jargon that Cosmo had no interest in, so he tuned it out. He watched Bucky. Bucky was scowling, as if something uncomfortable had occurred to him.

In the middle of T’Challa’s speech Bucky spoke up. “Hydra will know where I’m at.”

The room fell to silence. Ah, that’s what was bothering Bucky.

“What?” asked Steve in a startled voice. “How do you figure that, Buck?”

“You took pictures of me with that phone. If they look at them, they’ll know.” Bucky pointed out.

The room fell to silence again, this time uncomfortably contemplative.

“All they know if that you are likely in Wakanda,” T’Challa finally said thoughtfully. “And they will have a hard time getting to you.”  
“Do you think this thing that the aliens and Hydra are looking for is me?” Bucky asked bluntly. Cosmo felt, and smelled, tenseness and fear. Bucky didn’t want to go back to Hydra.

“No,” Natasha shook her head decisively. “It’s something that came from outer space. I’m sure of it.” Cosmo felt his stomach clench. Could she mean….him?

“So, they’ll be looking for that space pod you found.” Bucky turned to T’Challa.

T’Challa nodded, still thoughtful. “You never got a chance to look at it last time you were here. Perhaps now is the time to look at it.”

Natasha stood up. “Yes. I’ll at least be able to tell if the script is the same, even if I can’t read it.”

The rest of the humans stood up and moved to follow T’Challa out the door. Cosmo didn’t really want to see the space pod again but couldn’t very well balk. He was supposed to be a simple companion animal, not a highly intelligent space traveler.  
He followed everyone down corridors, into an elevator, down more corridors and into a large hangar bay. In a corner was the space pod. Here, surrounded by airplanes and quinjets, the space pod looked small, but Cosmo knew it was roomier than it looked.

Natasha and Sam crawled all over it, outside and inside. Nat confirmed the script matched what she’d found previously in other Hydra bases and communications. The language of the Elders, as the alien Taneleer Tivan, known as Collector, was evident all over the space craft. That Collector was in communication with people like Hydra boded ill for Earth to Cosmo’s way of thinking.  
Collector would stop at nothing to get Cosmo back into his collection. Cosmo knew this for a fact. No doubt these Hydra goons would love to have a telepathic and telekinetic dog too.

Satisfied with the space pod’s alien origins, obvious though it was, the humans stood around discussing it. Cosmo grew bored with their theories and speculations and lay down on the cool concrete. He didn’t want to live his life, however long that would be, looking over his shoulder, Cosmo thought. While he would have to be alert, from the way King T’Challa talked, Wakanda was the safest place for him to be. He would have to trust in that.

Bucky eventually herded Steve up to a room to rest, Natasha and Sam trailing behind. T’Challa went off to whatever duties occupied the king of a small and profitable African country. Cosmo followed the rest up to their rooms, going with Bucky and Steve into theirs and settling down for a nap.

He had Bucky and Bucky had him. Be it Collector or Hydra, they would handle anything that came their way.


	14. Chapter 14

Steve didn’t take long to heal, but it took longer to reassure Bucky of that. Cosmo was alternately amused and disgusted by the two humans bantering and commentary with one another. Sam and Natasha merely rolled their eyes but never came between the two lovers.

With Bucky and Steve playing house in Bucky’s hut, Cosmo spent the day herding goats with Sam, much to his disgust. His opinion of Sam as an interloper and causing jealousy in Bucky for Steve’s attentions had mellowed somewhat but he still disapproved of the other American. Sam kept trying to monopolize Steve’s time away from Bucky, which made Bucky sad. Therefore, Sam was evil. Cosmo put those thoughts aggressively in Sam’s head constantly, almost making the man paranoid.

He even mentioned it to Natasha. “I’m hearing voices,” he confessed, looking out at the goats grazing peacefully in their meadow. Cosmo was a couple of shade trees away but could hear the blonde haired woman head and black man perfectly.

“Oh?” Natasha didn’t seem alarmed by Sam’s confession. “And these voices, what do they say?”

“That I make Bucky sad, that I need to go away, I need to leave Steve alone with Bucky.”

Cosmo smirked mentally.

“I see.” Natasha’s tone was dry and uninterested. “And do they tell you to jump off a cliff without your wings on too?”

“No, but the other night while we were swimming the voice in my head did tell me I’d be better off drowning.”

At that Natasha looked at Sam with an unblinking stare. “I think,” she said finally, “the strain of these missions are getting to you. Perhaps we need a longer downtime than I thought.”

Sam harrumphed. “I am starting to get paranoid,” he told her solemnly. “Cuz I swear it’s the dog speaking to me. He’s always staring at me intently when I hear these voices.”

Natasha was unimpressed by this revelation. Cosmo liked Natasha. She might be brilliant spy but she wasn’t very smart when it came to dogs it seemed. Or believing in the unusual. “Right. The dog.”

Sam sighed heavily and lay back in the grass. “I know what it sounds like but I don’t think the dog likes me much.”

“Well,” offered Natasha blithely. “If it helps, I don’t like you much either but you’re nice to look at.”

Sam snorted a laugh.

“Stop being paranoid. Relax. Don’t think about anything about how we’re going to make goat stew more palatable for one more night.”

Cosmo raised his head at that. One more night? Did this mean this was Steve, Sam and Natasha’s last night in the village?

“I know, I know, I’m sick of goat too, but the downtime has been good for Steve,” chuckled Sam.

_And Bucky._ Cosmo thought at him and Sam glanced at him, frowning.

“And Bucky,” Natasha unconsciously echoed the dog.

Sam shot her a suspicious look then looked back at Cosmo, who turned his eyes to the herd of goats and seeming to pay no mind to the humans. Sam eventually relaxed back into the grass once more.

“Does it seem odd to you,” he said conversationally, “that Bucky’s dog killed a lion?”

Natasha gave Cosmo a long lingering look. “A little,” she confessed, “but I’ve seen stranger and so have you.”

“The lion had a broken neck, Nat,” pointed out Sam. “Maybe if he’d bit down on the jugular or something, yeah, but how the hell did he maneuver a lion into jumping straight at a tree and breaking her neck?”

Natasha glanced at Cosmo thoughtfully then shrugged. Cosmo got to his feet to amble the perimeter of the field and said mentally to Sam as he passed them, _Maybe I flung it into the tree using my super powers, comrade._

Sam sat straight up but Cosmo continued his lazy amble as if nothing concerned him more than watching goats. If a dog could smirk, Cosmo knew he would have been.

Sam said something, likely paranoid, that Cosmo didn’t catch but heard Natasha laugh at him about. Cosmo wagged his tail a couple of times in amusement. Messing with Sam was a hobby, a fun one. Much more amusing than watching goats.

But you couldn’t eat Sam.

Or could you?

* * *

“We leave tomorrow, Buck.”

“I know.” Bucky tried to keep his tone even and light but knew he failed when Steve wrapped his arms around Bucky’s neck and drew him in for a kiss. 

“We’ll be more careful this time, I promise.” Steve pecked him first on the nose, then both eyelids and then a languorous kiss on the lips.

“Better keep it, punk,” Bucky gasped as Steve’s hands trailed down his body. He wasn’t as bulky as he’d been while living in Europe. He was still doing manual labor for a living but it wasn’t as intensive, so he’d grown more lean than bulky with muscle. He was still in top shape. He made sure of that.

They lay down in the coolness of the hut and Bucky gasped as Steve took him. He rode the sensation of his orgasm, becoming drowsy. He wanted to savor this, pull it out when he was alone with just his dog. He didn’t begrudge Cosmo, not in the least, but Cosmo couldn’t make him orgasm and couldn’t hold him through the nightmares.

As the Winter Soldier, sex had never entered the equation. He was never sexually abused. He was never seen as a sexual being of any sort. He was a weapon, an object, not a being of any kind. As he came back to being Bucky once more, his sexual urges returned as sporadically as his memory. He’d had wet dreams, ashamed of them like he’d been as a teenager, but that had turned into fantasizing and jerking off.

There’d been a man in Athens, handsome, young, carefree and blindingly attractive. They worked the same construction jobs for less than living wage, Greece being in a financial freefall. The man had flirted with him and Bucky, eventually, began to flirt back. Finally, one day the man cornered him in a private area and kissed him. Bucky, to his surprise, kissed back and the kiss turned into a frantic grope. 

Bucky hadn’t thought he’d stand another’s hands on him ever again, but the mutual jerk off had been nice. Made him feel connected to the world once more and, above all, human. That, though, was when the fantasies about Steve began. The dreams, the memories, everything.

He began to collect everything he could find on Captain America. When he’d first come back to himself, Steve had featured only as a vague catalyst to breaking the programming. He lightly investigated the man before circumstances forced Buck to flee America altogether. After that, it was memories of his sisters, his mother, his father, his grandparents. This small blond shit kicker who he followed around, keeping out of trouble or at least evening the odds for. He never put the small punk from his memories as the blond giant who brought him from Hydra.

But a magazine article put a picture of the two Steves side by side and Bucky’s memory jolted into awareness. As did his libido.  
Now, he didn’t get Steve whenever he wanted, but he got him enough and without shame.

Bucky snuggled in Steve’s tightly wrapped embrace, knowing Sam and Natasha would be here soon enough, wanting dinner. They could wait. He was content and wanted to hold onto that a little while longer. The rest of the world could go to hell.


	15. Chapter 15

Steve, Sam and Natasha left again, this time with Okoye in tow. Cosmo watched Bucky watch them leave and leaned against his human for comfort. Steve was tough. He would come back. He just didn’t know how to confer that to Bucky forcefully enough that Bucky would stop worrying.

Per the promise Bucky wrangled out of Steve, Steve called every night to check in. Cosmo realized while they stayed at the palace that some phones needed electricity but whatever battery Shuri put in their phones didn’t need charging except through sunlight. Shuri really was a genius.

The days were routine goat watching. Once Bucky went hunting for birds with the village men just for some variety. The nights were filled with Bucky’s disturbed sleep. Neither were prepared then for what happened the fourth night after Steve’s team left them.

Cosmo was dozing, lulled by the lap of the water as he and Bucky slept by the lake. Bucky had given up on the hut this night and dropped off by the lake. Cosmo had no objections. He found the hut stifling tonight himself.

There were footsteps but there sometimes were. The villagers checking on Bucky. Cosmo paid the noise no mind. His first inkling something was wrong was a zip! sound following a sharp pinch in his side. He let out a yelp and tried to stagger to his feet but couldn’t. He felt his muscles stiffen and his mind became sluggish.

_BUCKY!_ He cried in his mind.

There was another zip! Bucky, though, was already moving. 

The fight was almost completely silent. One of the men not fighting Bucky picked Cosmo up and hauled him over his shoulder and began to run. _Bucky!_ Cosmo cried out again, terrified. He couldn’t make a noise except with his mind. Would Bucky hear him? Would Bucky understand that it was Cosmo crying out for help?

He was relieved when he heard Bucky shout in outrage, “What the hell do you want with my dog?” The man running though soon moved out of hearing range and the heaviness on Cosmo’s mind enveloped him completely and he sank into darkness.

When he awoke, he was in a cage. 

Cosmo opened his eyes and tried to move. His muscles cooperated but were heavy and tight, not easily to control. He wasn’t sure he could stand up. Instead he looked around as much as he could without moving his head. Perhaps it was better not to let his captors know he was awake.

He was in a lab, with beakers, syringes, refrigerators, and other equipment Cosmo didn’t recognize but made the fur stand up straight from his body. He let out an involuntary whimper. He didn’t want to be experimented on any more.

There was no one in the lab but Cosmo found no relief in that. He had no idea where he was and he had no idea what happened to Bucky. Had these men captured Bucky too? Were they Hydra? Had Collector’s minions found Cosmo, perhaps, and brought him here for punishment for his escape?

A careful perusal of the lab garnered no clues and no reassurance for the fearful animal. Each passing moment he could feel strength returning to his body and slowly he began to maneuver himself into an upright position. Finally standing on all fours, Cosmo investigated his cage.

He could see no lock upon it that he recognized. He sniffed the air but could smell nothing except an antiseptic smell. Not even cologne from a human.

He sat on his haunches, resigned to wait for the bad guys to reveal themselves. He hoped it would be soon. He was getting a little hungry.

* * *

Bucky fought like a madman and the sounds of the fight and Bucky’s shouting brought the villagers en masse. The Hydra agents scattered like cockroaches once the villagers showed up and Bucky gave chase. The villagers didn’t know what was going on but knew enough to know that the invaders were there to hurt White Wolf. White Wolf was of Wakanda now. Wakandans defended each other to the death.

A few Hydra agents were left scattered in unconscious heaps but some got away, with his damned dog, no less! Bucky was outraged. What the hell did they want with his dog?

In broken Wakandan, Bucky explained that the unconscious men had ways of committing suicide to stop from being interrogated. Mouths were searched for suicide poison capsules. Weapons were removed and the men tied up. The palace was contacted immediately and Bucky picked up his phone, hoping against hope he wasn’t putting Steve in mortal peril by calling him.

“Buck?” came Steve’s worried voice.

“I think I know what Hydra’s been looking all over Africa for,” he reported grimly.

“Yeah? What?” asked Steve.

“My dog.”

“Cosmo?”

“Hydra just kidnapped him. They fought me long enough to take him. We’ve got a few prisoners. Get your ass here as soon as you can. I’m mounting a rescue mission as soon as I get info from these goons.”

“We’re almost done here. We’ll be back in two days at the most,” Steve told him. “Wait for us.”

“I can’t make that promise,” Bucky told him grimly. “If I’m gone when you get here, I’ll leave you a message where I’m going and you can play at reinforcements.” Then, still outraged, he growled, “They took my damned dog, Steve!”

Steve heaved a sigh that if he’d been standing next to Bucky would have ruffled Bucky’s hair. “Keep us posted. I’ll tell Sam and Nat.” Then, “Be careful, Bucky. I love you.”

Bucky, despite his outrage and worry, softened a bit at the endearment. “I love you too, punk. We both gotta do what we gotta do. Bye.”

He hung up without hearing Steve’s answering good-bye. His kimoyo bead beeped at him. He pressed the tiny button that answered and Shuri’s sleepy voice drifted through the darkness to him. “Brother is on his way,” she reported. “He’s bringing the arm. You are going to need it.”

Bucky thought about arguing and then reconsidered. She wasn’t wrong. He was going to need both hands for this. “Thanks, Shuri,” he said.

“Keep me posted,” she ordered in an imperious tone, sounding more awake now. “I want to know what they want our Lion Killer for. Perhaps they heard of his prowess and think to recruit him?” Her words were flippant but she couldn’t quite hide the worry and fear in her tone.

“No, I think we were right all along,” he said grimly.

She was puzzled, he knew. “About what?”

“I think my dog’s from outer space.”

Shuri started to laugh but subsided when he didn’t join in. “Are you serious?”

“Everything’s too coincidental with him showing up. These strange communications between Hydra and an alien, the space pod using the same alien language, the dog showing up on the same night as the space pod landing. It didn’t land that far from the village, after all,” Bucky summed up. “And strange things have been happening. I’ve been hearing a voice in my head. So has Sam, I’ve heard him muttering about it. Things moving around of their own accord in my home that I know I didn’t do.”

“We won’t know anything,” Shuri said slowly, as if thinking about all his evidence, “until we find the dog. As I said, keep me up to date.”

“I will. Go back to bed. It’s late. Princesses need their beauty sleep,” he teased though he didn’t feel it.

She snorted but cut off the communication.

Twenty minutes later King T’Challa was getting loud and convoluted explanations from his people of the night’s events. He held up an imperious hand and silence descended. He looked at Bucky. “What do you think?” he asked, his deep brown eyes glinting with a violence Bucky had never seen in the man before.

“I think we need to get these idiots to talk and then make a plan for rescue,” Bucky told him grimly.

T’Challa gave a decisive nod, walked over to one of the tied-up Hydra thugs and gave him a solid kick in the ribs. He then took a large bucket of water from one of the village women and dumped it on the man’s face. It took a few minutes and several buckets of water but the Hydra agent came to, looking around half fearfully, half defiantly.

“I am King T’Challa. I rule these lands, as have my ancestors for generations before me. I do not take kindly to colonizers coming here and disrupting my people. In fact, I deal harshly with them. So, this is how this is going to work. I will ask questions. My friend, White Wolf, will ask questions. You will answer them and you might live. If you do not, we will kill you, throw you to the lions that live in a pride to the east and no one will ever know where your body resides. Then we will move on to the next agent. I have all night. I am the Black Panther. I never tire. I never cease.”

The man rolled his tongue around in his mouth while muttering, “Hail Hydra” but didn’t find what he was looking for. Bucky held up the tooth capsule, making sure it was obvious to see in the lantern and moonlight. The Hydra agent blanched.

“Looking for this?” Bucky asked casually. He threw it on the ground and crushed it beneath the boots he’d put on earlier. “Did you really think the Winter Soldier wouldn’t know all your stupid little tricks at escaping retribution?”

“I will tell you nothing!” the man cried in Wakandan.

T’Challa grinned at Bucky, who grinned back. T’Challa made a motion and one of the Dora Milaje hanging back brought forward a carry container. She stopped in front of Bucky and he opened it. Sure enough, it was the arm he’d seen in Shuri’s lab those couple of weeks ago.

He looked askance at T’Challa. “It will snap directly into the port on your shoulder.”

Bucky nodded, stripped his shirt off, pulled the rubber covering from the shoulder socket, picked up the arm and slotted into place, neat as you please. There was a brief flavor of rubber in his mouth and his brain lit up like a Christmas tree but he was quickly testing the mobility, moving his new arm up and down, side to side, making a fist and relaxing it.  
He looked at the woman and nodded his thanks. She nodded back, looked down at the Hydra agent and then she grinned. Viciously.

T’Challa stepped back and waved a negligent hand at the Hydra agent. “White Wolf, he’s all yours.”

Bucky grinned and walked toward the Hydra agent. Maybe it was time for a little revenge.


	16. Chapter 16

“Ah, the infamous Cosmo!” 

The man before him gestured broadly, like a showman. He was tall but bulky, looking more at home in front of a large table full of succulent foods than some little lab in the backwaters of some poor African country.

Cosmo did nothing. He didn’t move and he sure didn’t make a comment in the man’s mind.

“I know who, and what, you are, my dear canine comrade,” the man told him. “If you haven’t read my mind yet, allow me to introduce myself. You knew my father. I am Dimitri Borislav. My father spoke of his dear Cosmo often, despairing that they were never able to bring you back down to Earth.”

Cosmo didn’t twitch but his mind was racing. This was Vladimir’s son? This could not be good. He thought he’d been kidnapped by Hydra. What was Vladimir’s son doing here?

“He, of course,” continued on Dimitri blithely, “had no idea you’d floated off and became a super dog. However, our friend Collector knew you and reported you were returning to Earth. Of course, we had to bring you back into the fold.”

This grew more confusing and worse sounding the more Dimitri spoke, thought Cosmo.

Dimitri continued speaking. “I’m sure you are a bit confused so allow me to explain. My father worked for the Soviet arm of Hydra, though he didn’t know it at the time. Everything was so convoluted then. And really, he didn’t care who foot the bill as long as he was paid. The Soviets,” Dimitri sneered, “were bad about paying their bills.”

Cosmo felt a thrill of horror. He’d been an experiment of Hydra, not the Soviet Union?! He cast his mind back but his memories before as an experiment were disjointed. Clear in some case, fuzzy and indistinct in others. His clear memories came after he passed through the irradiated cloud and had been mutated.

Something must have shown in his body language for Dimitri gave an obnoxious laugh of delight. “Ah yes, you remember something, I see.”

Cosmo curled his lip and growled.

Dimitri wagged an index finger chidingly at him. “Now now, no need to be hostile. We wish to be friends! You help us, we help you!”

_Right_, Cosmo told him using his telepathy. _I am Stalin._

Dimitri froze on the spot and gaped.

_What? You thought Collector was making up my powers?_ Cosmo asked the man before him. _Perhaps he didn’t tell you about all of them._

Using his telekinesis, he began to levitate objects into the air and toss them at Dimitri and the two guards in the room with him. Chemicals, vials, beakers, metal contraptions and equipment, empty cages and anything else he could pick up was unceremoniously lobbed at his captors.

The guards fled quickly, screaming incoherently in a language Cosmo didn’t recognize. Dimitri ducked, dodged, got pelted and, eventually, he too was forced to retreat. He got through the door and gave Cosmo a hard look and warning. “You can’t defeat Hydra, Cosmo. We are infinite. We are forever. Cut off one head, two more shall take its place.”

With a squawk, Dimitri slammed the door shut just as Cosmo tossed a vial of what turned out to be acid at where his face had been, crunching against the door with a sizzle that would have been satisfying on the monster’s face.

Cosmo was alone.

There was no Bucky. 

Wait.

Dimitri had not mentioned Bucky or the Winter Soldier. Not once. So that must mean they don’t have Bucky. He felt hope rise within him. Bucky was his, he was Bucky’s. Bucky would find a way to come for Cosmo. Cosmo just had to hold on and stay alive.

No doubt, help was on its way.

* * *

The Hydra agents looked even worse for wear than when the villagers finished beating the crap out of them when Bucky finished his ‘interrogation’. Much as he anticipated, but hoped would not come to pass, he got nothing out of them. They weren’t dumb per se, but stubborn and even Bucky’s experience in dealing with stubborn people (Steve) couldn’t get them to talk.

T’Challa, without remorse, disposed of them one at a time as he’d threatened, to no avail. It was brutal, thought Bucky, but really, Hydra couldn’t be allowed to think Wakanda was weak or they would have a foothold before you knew it. As promised to the first Hydra mook, T’Challa had their bodies lugged to the edge of the nearby lion pride’s territory and dumped. No evidence left behind, not that Hydra would come looking. These men were cannon fodder, entirely expendable.

Bucky thought some of the villagers would be a little queasy at their king’s decisive brutality, but they weren’t. Wakandans had a low opinion of the outside world, after seeing the dangers enacted upon their neighbors for centuries by invaders and colonizers. They had kept their independence and their advanced society secret because they were unafraid to make sure there were no witnesses to it. Wakanda had come into its own during a time when they were considered subhuman by the ‘powers’ of Europe. With their swift justice and insular lives, eventually the few Europeans that ventured into the little African countries were quick to report that it wasn’t worth Europe’s energy to deal with them, no matter the lure of resources that trickled in by rumors.

Having spent more years alive as an assassin than a soldier or civilian, Bucky didn’t blink an eye at the Hydra agents’ deaths. One less person he’d have to take out later on a rescue mission. He rotated his arm, the metal and machinery within making a whirring sound. He felt a bit self-conscious with it but no one remarked on his new appendage, not even a sideways glance of curiosity.

With the new arm he felt himself slipping a bit into the Soldier’s mindset and he didn’t want that. He didn’t want to feel that coldness, that blankness, that inhuman nothingness in his mind. Then he had a thought. He might need the disconnect though to do what he was about to do with only the Black Panther as back up.

No matter what Steve had said on the phone last night, he wasn’t waiting for Steve and his team. Hydra had his dog. They were going to pay.  
“Now what?” Bucky asked T’Challa as the two men were left alone by Bucky’s hut.

T’Challa heaved a sigh and shook his head. “I do not know,” he confessed.

Bucky grunted and tapped his kimoyo beads and said briskly, “Princess Shuri.”

“Hey, White Wolf!” came her anxious answer. “Any news?”

“The dumbasses wouldn’t talk. Thoroughly brain washed. They are lion chow and we are back to square one,” he reported grimly. “I’m gonna call Steve and we’re gonna start hitting every Hydra base in Africa and – “

“Why don’t you just track him?” she interrupted.

“I’m not a blood hound,” snapped Bucky peevishly but that caused Shuri to laugh.

“Did you really think that was just a piece of leather with a dog tag around his neck?” she asked cheerfully.

T’Challa’s head whipped around at her words, his scowl ferocious. “Why,” he ground out loud enough she could hear, “did you not tell us this last night or this morning?”

“You needed to let off steam so you could make a plan,” she informed both men with an obnoxious know-it-all tone. “It would only get all of you killed if you both went in like a couple of hot heads. Now you have released your anger and can think clearly. Here,” both their beaded bracelets beeped emphasizing a download, “are the coordinates of where they took him. You should get there by nightfall if you hurry. Good hunting!” She cut communication.

T’Challa’s scowl was more pronounced and Bucky knew his couldn’t be much better. “Sisters,” T’Challa intoned, “are know-it-all pains in the rear end.”

Bucky sighed. “Don’t I know it, pal. I had three of them. Plus Steve.”

They checked the coordinates Shuri sent to them. The country next door was mostly jungle and the Hydra base was deep within the jungle state. It would indeed take until nightfall to reach the base if they wanted to be stealthy.

“This is your show,” Bucky told the King of Wakanda. “I’m not stepping on any diplomatic toes going in guns blazing. What’s our play?”

T’Challa growled, an impressively panther like growl, and started back toward the village and his transport. “Come, we will get you proper gear in the armory. I don’t care about diplomacy at the moment. I only care that Hydra dare enter my country, harm one of its citizens and stole something valuable to us. I will let my mother worry about soothing ruffled feathers. Tonight, we get Cosmo back and show Hydra not to mess with Wakanda.”

Bucky grinned toothily, feeling warm at T’Challa’s pronouncement that he considered Bucky a citizen of his country. Not many white men bore that honor, if any at all, in fact. And Cosmo was important to Bucky, therefore he was important to T’Challa, full stop.

Bucky had fought against Black Panther but never with Black Panther.

He fought down an evil giggle of glee. Hydra wasn’t going to know what hit them.

* * *

A guard nervously poked his head into the lab and looked around. Cosmo didn’t move from his prone position facing the door. These guards were nothing; superstitious idiots the lot of them. He wanted Dimitri’s head on a platter and was waiting to expend his energy toward that goal.

The guard stepped in and the smell of food wafted to Cosmo’s nose. The man, stocky in build and dark in skin like the other guards, obviously locals, cautiously approached Cosmo’s cage and stopped dead when Cosmo raised his head to glare at the man. He nervously held up a bowl.

“Food,” he said and slipped the bowl in through a slot in the cage specifically designed for a food or water bowl.

_Water._ Cosmo spoke in the man’s head, causing the guard to swallow down his panic. _I’m thirsty._

“Of-of course,” stammered the guard. It would be amusing if it wasn’t so pathetic and the situation so fraught with danger. The guard looked around, trying to watch Cosmo, the loose materials that could thrown and whatever he was looking for and not finding. “There’s not another bowl,” the guard gulped.

_So, go get one, stupid._ Cosmo rolled his eyes as the guard nodded frantically and beat a hasty retreat.

Cosmo was more thirsty than hungry and he didn’t trust Dimitri to not drug his food. This guard wasn’t that smart. The water would likely be safe to drink. Cosmo leaned his nose into the food bowl and sniffed. Yes, there was a bitter smell to it. Drugged. He shoved the bowl with a front paw back out the hole and gave his tail a wag with he heard the bowl hit the floor. Did Dimitri think him stupid just because he was a dog? Amateur.

About five minutes later the guard returned with a small empty bowl that looked none to clean, filled it in the lab’s sink and, avoiding the spilled food in front of the cage, slid the water bowl in the slot instead. Assured that, while in a disgusting vessel, the water wasn’t drugged or poisoned, Cosmo drank thirstily.

_Go away before I start throwing things at you._

The guard left in a rush, relieved to be away, as Cosmo heard in his mind, the unnatural beast.

Unnatural. Well, not entirely wrong, Cosmo supposed, but at least he had an intelligent mind and used it, instead of falling for lies and trickery and being dumb as a post. He finished the water and lay back down, the cage’s crisscrossed bars digging into his belly.

His cage was small, barely tall enough for him to stand up in and turn in a circle to stretch. It was on a table or shelving unit of some sort, surrounded by other cages, all empty. He was the only occupant of this particular lab. He wondered why and then decided he didn’t want to know.

Time passed and he dozed, knowing he needed the rest in case he needed to act when help arrived, or the enemy did.

He had no idea of what time of day it was as there were no windows but some time had passed when the door opened again and, one eye opening at the noise, Cosmo saw Dimitri poke his head in. Seeing the still form of the dog, Dimitri grew bold and stepped in. Cosmo lay still to see what the idiot was going to do.

Dimitri drew closer, wary despite the dog seeming unconscious. Then Dimitri looked down, saw the spilled dog food on the floor, squawked and stumbled backward in alarm.

_Hello, comrade,_ Cosmo said. _Come back for more? Here._ He lobbed a battered cage at the man, who didn’t duck in time and it struck his shoulder, hard, sending the portly man tumbling to the floor.

_Oh, did you fall down? Here let me help you up._ Cosmo exerted all his energy and his telekinesis lifted the man up slightly. Dimitri gasped in dismay and tried to run, but instead ran in place hanging in the air. He looked ridiculous.

Cosmo gave a chuffing, doggy laugh and dropped the man, hard, on his ass. Dimitri let out an outraged bellow, scrambled ungracefully to his feet and pulled a gun from his jacket. “Enough!” he shouted.

‘A gun. That is new element to the game,’ thought Cosmo. He knew he couldn’t stop a bullet with his telekinesis, but he also wasn’t sure Dimitri even knew how to use the gun. The man’s hand was shaking and the gun barrel wavered right and left with the movement.

Cosmo sniffed disdainfully, hoping his apprehension at the gun’s appearance didn’t translate.

Dimitri blinked a moment and then let out a belly laugh that disconcerted Cosmo no end. “You think we captured you to give you back to Collector?” chortled Dimitri. He holstered his gun and smirked. “No, my dear pup, he has washed his hands of you. You belong to Hydra now. He has been,” and Dimitri paused as if searching for the right word, “assisting us with weapons and other items of interest for a couple of years now. Since the Battle of New York and the Chitauri invasion. He merely warned us that you might be on the way back to Earth and that we would be interested in your unique gifts.”

From things Steve told Bucky, Cosmo knew a little about the Battle of New York so he understood what Dimitri was referring too. That Collector had been in contact with Hydra, supplying Hydra with alien technology, however, was disturbing and something that Steve, Sam, Nat, Bucky and T’Challa would be very interested in knowing.

_So, what do you want with me?_

Dimitri continued to smirk. “Once we have indoctrinated you, you will be indispensable to Hydra, my friend, quite indispensable. We can find traitors, spies, moles. We can use your gifts in training new agents in steeling their minds against invasion and interrogation.” Dimitri cautiously approached the cage and made an expansive gesture with both arms. “You will willingly help us, comrade,” he sneered, “because if you don’t, we will invade Wakanda, take back the Winter Soldier and you will both be our puppets. If mind wiping worked on humans, with their advanced brains, imagine what it will do to your less evolved dog brain.”

Cosmo curled his lip and snarled. _You will leave Bucky alone. Take one step near him, you scum of the earth, and you’ll have more than cages to sidestep._

Dimitri laughed, a mad laugh that caused Cosmo to twitch in revulsion. “Hail Hydra!” he cried and then quickly made his way to the door. “Consider your options, my friend,” he advised before exiting the room. “Choose wisely.” The door slammed behind him with a strange finality.

_Oh Bucky,_ thought Cosmo, sending the thought out into the ether. _Come quickly. I’m starting to become very frightened._


	17. Chapter 17

The Hydra base was either a collection of cleverly disguised, bomb proof buildings in the middle of the jungle or the saddest excuse for a hideout Bucky had ever seen, let alone heard of. Except for one building that had a tin roof, all of them were grass rooves and mud and daub huts, not unlike his own really.

The guards patrolling look like locals in ill-fitting uniforms and they held their guns like they’d never held one before. Bucky rolled his eyes as one guard put the rifle on his shoulder like he would have seen in old movies and marched around like a good little soldier. Unfortunately for him, this display of soldierly bearing was marred when he tripped over his loose shoelace that he’d stepped on with his other foot and went face first into the mud.

They’d arrived in the jungle just as a rain shower hit, soaking both Bucky in his black fatigues and bullet proof armor and T’Challa in Black Panther gear. After a couple hours making their way through the forest, they reached the base/village and now sat in the tree line staring intently at the setup.

“This is pathetic,” muttered T’Challa in disgust.

“They don’t seem enthusiastic recruits, either,” Bucky pointed out.

“So where are the actual Hydra agents,” wondered T’Challa before melding into the trees. Bucky followed.

The tin roof building was bigger than they first thought and the walls were concrete, not mud brick like the other structures. It was a little sturdier but not by much. The guards outside this building, though, looked more professional and on the ball. They held their weapons like they were trained to do so and were comfortable in their uniforms. The guards looked neither left nor right but Bucky could tell all the men’s senses were on alert.

“Better,” commented T’Challa in a satisfied tone.

“Still kind of pathetic though,” Bucky said. “We can take them out easy without anyone knowing, slip in and just clean house.”

T’Challa’s expression was impossible to read with the mask covering his face but his tone was amused. “And you say Captain Rogers spends too much time on the ‘going in guns blazing’ tactic when that is your own preferred method?”

Bucky shrugged. “I’m better at it than he is,” he rejoined. “He’s a reckless punk who takes stupid chances. I leave no man standing.”

“Where did you learn to fight?” asked T’Challa still sounding amused.

“Scrap fighting on Atlantic Avenue and then was city wide champion boxer before I got drafted. Steve could barely fight a sick cat and win the fight. He never could swing a right hook properly.” Bucky infused scorn into his voice. Steve had gotten better admittedly, in this strange, bright, shiny future, but he was still a reckless punk in Bucky’s opinion.

Bucky got no warning when T’Challa launched himself from their cover but he quickly recovered from his surprise and followed the king’s lead. Both guards had no idea they were there. One minute they were standing guard, the next they were unconscious lumps in the mud.

T’Challa hefted one over his shoulder and Bucky hefted the other and they dumped them in the exact place they’d been hiding a moment earlier. Then T’Challa just opened the front door and strolled on in.

It was several rooms large, the building, and in poor condition. The first room they entered was a barracks of some sort, filled with guards resting, relaxing, playing cards or watching a rickety television in the corner. T’Challa hit the closest one with an unsheathed claw, slicing the man’s chest while his other, sheathed hand, clobbered the man unconscious. 

Bucky just opened fired at anything that moved that was not T’Challa and had a distinct Hydra logo on it. T’Challa’s way was quieter, admittedly, but Bucky’s was more satisfying. The guards were a non-issue in very short order.

“I was looking forward to a fight,” complained T’Challa.

“Sorry,” shrugged Bucky. “I’ve always been a bit impatient.”

T’Challa laughed.

There was a babble of Russian further down the hall. Bucky didn’t catch much but he did catch ‘dog’ and ‘hostage’. “We gotta get a move on,” he told T’Challa moving toward the door. “We found the right place.”

Two guards rushed them as they moved further into the building. Bucky shot one in the head and T’Challa gutted the other one in one slice of his clawed right hand. A fat man with graying hair came stumbling out of a room, half dressed, saw them and began to run. He got to a door at the far end of the hall, jerked the door open and stumbled inside.  
There was loud barking from that room and then a gunshot. The barking went silent.

T’Challa kicked the door off its hinges and gestured for Bucky to go first. Enraged at the idea that the fat bastard had shot, possibly killed, his dog, Bucky entered ready for retribution. Instead he found a scene that made him smile a huge smile. T’Challa stopped behind him and gave a disbelieving laugh.

The fat man was hanging suspended in the air, upside down. His pudgy face was turning red. “Help me!” the man cried, his accent heavy Russian.

“Who’re you?” demanded Bucky.

The man didn’t answer and in retaliation was spun around at a high rate of speed. When the spinning stopped, the man groaned and threw up, still hanging upside down.

“I repeat, who are you?” asked Bucky, lowering his weapon. He looked around. How was this happening?

T’Challa tapped his shoulder and pointed a finger over his shoulder to the corner. There in a cage on a metal table, was Cosmo looking no worse for wear. The dog was standing up and staring in great concentration at the Russian hanging in mid-air.

“Cosmo!” Bucky cried. Cosmo’s attention wavered and the fat Russian fell to the ground, landing in his own sick.

“Ew,” T’Challa intoned. It was a word he’d picked up from Bucky, no doubt.

Cosmo wagged his tail happily. The Russian staggered to his feet and Bucky noticed he was still clutching a pistol. Bucky raised the rifle to shoot but needn’t have bothered. The Russian cried out, dropped the gun and clutched at that hand as if in pain.

“Who. Are. You?” Bucky grit out and shot the man’s knee.

The man collapsed with a scream of pain, clutching his blown-out knee. He raised terror filled eyes and gasped, “Dimitri Borislav.”

Bucky blinked. Okay. This was…surreal. He’d been expecting some powerful Russian oligarch, not some fat, pudgy wishy-washy fish. T’Challa made a ‘tch’ sound behind him and stepped around Bucky to head to the cage Cosmo was in.

“What’d you want with my dog?” Bucky demanded.

“Hail Hydra!” Dimitri cried.

Every man in the room distinctly heard a slight Russian voice say in their heads, _Whatever_, before Dimitri rose high in the air, spun face first toward the far wall and then went crashing through it. Bucky saw the man’s body hit the ground with a wet, sickening thud and not move.

He blinked and looked at T’Challa. T’Challa removed the mask from his head and looked at Bucky, equally incredulous. Both looked at Cosmo, who was wagging his tail frantically.  
There was a bunch of commotion outside, shouting and hap-hazard gunfire that was quickly extinguished. Bucky raised his rifle and T’Challa quickly redonned the mask. They braced themselves for an invasion of Hydra guards from the village but instead Natasha stepped through, glancing down at what was left of Dimitri Borislav.

“Did you do that?” she asked, impressed.

“No,” both men replied. “Cosmo did,” Bucky added. Natasha only raised an eyebrow, spotted the dog and went over to him.

She surveyed the cage, made a tutting sound and went to work. “I haven’t seen this style of cage since my Red Room days,” she commented even as she swung the door open. Cosmo jumped down, staggered a little from being cooped up but quickly got his equilibrium back. He rushed to Bucky, who hugged him close.

Steve and Sam entered the building through the makeshift hole using words like “what?” and “how?” Natasha was watching Bucky, who was ruffling Cosmo’s fur and talking in that high-pitched nonsensical voice people use with pets, saying cheerfully, “Who’s a good dog? Who threw that Hydra agent right through the wall like it was paper? You did, yes you did, such a good dog!” He looked up at Steve, who looked flabbergasted. “See? I told you he was a good dog!”


	18. Chapter 18

The whole kit and kaboodle returned to Wakanda and T’Challa insisted everyone sleep in real beds for an evening. Shuri and their mother made sure a sumptuous meal was ready for them when they woke. Everyone ate voraciously, Cosmo’s food unspiced but the finest beef available in Wakanda. He wasn’t complaining, not in the least.

A reckoning was coming, though, he knew and he needed to be fortified for it. Bucky, and Bucky’s friends, would need to know all. He supposed this changed things, Bucky knowing that Cosmo was not an ordinary dog, but Cosmo was determined to stress to Bucky that he didn’t want things to change. He just wanted to be a good dog to a good master.

After their hearty meal, everyone went back to bed. Cosmo curled up at the foot of Steve and Bucky’s huge bed and ignored the lovemaking going on between the two. Humans were strange.

When it was time for the evening meal, everyone was more rested and Shuri was practically vibrating in her seat with questions. Cosmo could read them in her mind clear as a bell. So many questions. He mentally sighed.

T’Challa led them to an outdoor garden, flowers closing their blooms for the evening, night blooming flowers opening up in their place. The bird song was tapering off as they stopped their twittering for the night. A fountain gurgled somewhere in the darkness.

All the humans had a local alcoholic drink. Bucky had let Cosmo sniff the glass. It smelled foul. How the humans were drinking, and enjoying, it was beyond his understanding. They chatted of desultory topics until finally Shuri demanded an accounting of the rescue. T’Challa and Bucky obliged. Occasionally one of them would glance down at Cosmo with astonishment on their faces, except Bucky, who looked at him with a fierce pride that made Cosmo’s tail involuntarily wag in appreciation.

Once the story was done, there was silence. Shuri then began to laugh. Bucky seemed nonplused by her reaction. Cosmo looked at Steve, who was grinning at him. He looked at Sam, who looked disgruntled. Nat was also amused.

“You mean, he has been talking in my head this entire time?” Sam demanded.

Bucky shrugged. “You’re not alone.”

“He probably didn’t tell you to jump off a cliff without your wings!” Sam sounded outraged.

Bucky grinned at Cosmo. Cosmo wagged his tail again. “Good dog,” Bucky approved. Sam sputtered. “I’m betting he’s the one that rearranged my hut too.” Cosmo whined. Bucky laughed. “Good dog.”

Shuri stopped laughing and wiped her eyes of her tears of mirth. “Very well,” she said. “He is indeed a good dog,” she added. 

Everyone ignored Sam’s muttered “Homicidal maniac is what he is.”

“We’ll go back to the village tomorrow, if you’re willing to put us up another night, T’Challa?” Steve rose from his seat and stretched languidly.

“It is no trouble at all,” T’Challa assured them. He gave Bucky a knowing nod that Cosmo couldn’t interpret before adding, “We could all use another good night’s sleep, I should think.”

There were murmurs of assent and everyone dispersed to their assigned rooms. Sam gave Cosmo a baleful look. Cosmo sniffed disdainfully and turned his head away from Sam dismissively.

Steve laughed. “Ah Cosmo, Sam’s a good friend. He’s a good man to have at your back. He’s not taking me away from Bucky, I promise.” He pulled Bucky up from his chair. 

Bucky earlier had given Shuri back the arm. Everyone had protested but subsided when Bucky just said he only wanted the arm in a fight. Otherwise he wanted to embrace being one armed and normal.

“Come to bed, Buck,” Steve whispered in Bucky’s ear. Cosmo saw Bucky shiver but shake his head.

“Soon but I got something to do first,” Bucky replied.

Steve hesitated, looked down at Cosmo with an inscrutable expression. “All right,” he said and left the room.

Bucky sat back down in his chair. Dog and man sat in the still nighttime, companionable.

“You’re gonna have to talk to me eventually,” Bucky finally said.

_What do you want me to say?_ asked Cosmo.

Bucky pursed his lips. “I want everything.”

Cosmo stood up and put his chin on Bucky’s knee and got a scratch for his pains.

_Where do you want me to start?_

Bucky’s mouth turned up into a wry smile. “Try the beginning, pal, try the beginning.”


End file.
